Let us hope we never read that Dr Joanna Burger's husband has instituted divorce proceedings, citing Tiko as co-respondent. Tiko is a 46-year-old Red-lored Amazon parrot that lives with Joanna and Mike in a volatile mΘnage-α-trois in Somerset, New Jersey. The triangle is not equilateral: Tiko is amorously the most demanding of the three and, we are told, "ferociously jealous".
Dr Joanna Burger is a professor of biology, specialising in ornithology, at Rutgers University. Her doctoral thesis was on gulls. Her husband is a doctor of medicine who also has a PhD in biology.
In the beginning, they shared an interest in birds that was objectively scientific. But Joanna's interest in Tiko, she relates, has developed beyond science. She loves the parrot and the parrot loves her. In 16 years of domestic intimacy, the bond between them has become closer and closer, even though he must have noticed every mating season that his beloved is unable to lay eggs. Tiko confirmed her belief that "companionship can extend across species' lines". The subtitle of Joanna's book might well be The Confession of a Psittaphile.
"A mere hug from Mike brought Tiko to Mike's shoulder with threatening calls," she writes. "Tiko tugged his hair and nibbled his ear, and this quickly escalated to a painful blood-drawing bite if Mike persisted. More ardent advances turned Tiko frantic. When Mike gently kissed my supine body Tiko landed on his naked back, wildly pecking him . . . We would shut Tiko out of the bedroom for our more heated moments."
Joanna and the parrot spent a lot of time preening each other. Tiko shared her food, eating from her plate rather than his own dish. Quite a playful show-off, he amused her by sliding down the banister. Stimulated by her praise, he grew brighter plumage. "Tiko subtly altered the direction of my career. He redirected my interests from pure science to that place where science and wildlife management intersect. I saw that my responsibility to him, the trust in which he held me, extended to all creatures and the planet as a whole."
The book is well illustrated with eight pages of colour photographs: "Tiko courting me by his favourite nest site"; "Tiko preens my toes, carefully trimming the cuticles and establishing ownership"; Tiko eating flowers; Tiko "loves to put his head under my chin for a massage"; Tiko "nuzzling my cheek in a parrot kiss", and even Tiko using "one of his shed feathers to preen himself in a kind of auto-eroticism".
As well as proving that Dr Burger in her late 50s is still very attractive to a parrot, this bizarre love story is interspersed with ornithological information of general interest. The first parrots lived 40 million years ago and 353 species remain in the wild, in spite of the depredations by illicit traders.
Although the book is mainly about Tiko, her husband and herself, she mentions that "Queen Victoria had a pet parrot who greeted her each morning, to her great delight, with God save the Queen!" This further evidence of parrots' "ability to speak and understand our language" makes one realise that the term "bird-brained" should be regarded as a compliment.
Patrick Skene Catling is an author and critic