JessiMuse wrote:I think they imprint more than you give them credit for, Pajarita. They definitely take a little longer to take said imprint off, when you're raising and releasing a wild orphan (but IS possible when done correctly). Even after they've long grown and adapted to the wild life, they sometimes drop by for a visit I think it might be obvious by now that they do have the ability to recognize faces too (though that might be something a lot of birds can do). Despite the common misconception, pigeons and doves have shown a considerable amount of intelligence (not quite parrot level, but it's noticeable).
I think that the problem is that we are using different meanings for 'imprinting'. The one I am referring to is the ethiological and psychological term which is (and I am quoting)
"any kind of phase-sensitive learning (learning occurring at a particular age or a particular life stage) that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior"
This is a process that has a time window (in parrots, it happens when they are very young -but we don't really know for a fact when for the different species- and that's why they are pulled out of the nest and hand-fed by humans so they would 'imprint' to them -in puppies, it's from 8 to 12 weeks of age and, in kittens, from 4 to 8 weeks), it's not something that happens over time or 'builds up'. There are different kinds of imprinting, animals have two: the 'filial' (from baby to parent and the one we use with parrots, puppies, kittens, etc) and the 'sexual' (which determines how the animal will choose its mate).
I think that what you are talking about is a taming and/or learning process where animals learn to adapt to the new environment, to fear or not to fear, etc. It's more a matter of trust than of identity. For example, in my country, shepherds would take an orphan lamb and raise it with a bottle in the barn. This lamb would grow up without seeing other sheep, surrounded by and trusting humans implicitly to the point that it would follow the human around even when adult. And, when the lamb becomes an adult, the shepherds use it to 'guide' the rest of the sheep when they need to move them from one pasture to another. All they have to do is walk in front, with the 'guacha' (that's the name they give to the orphan sheep -they also don't cut the tail so it always has a long one and it's easy to identify when among the other ones) following and, behind it, the other sheep which would follow any sheep that walks in any direction. But the guacha knows she is a sheep. She grazes, sleeps and procreates just like any other sheep. Why? Because although it has learned to trust humans completely, she did not imprint filialy to them. Parrots regurgitate, masturbate on humans hands and want to nest with them because they imprint filialy to them - see the difference? Sheep learn to trust while parrots lose their parrot identity.
He lived outside, but I spent time with him every day (considering his species is native in my area, we already have plants they eat in the wild, and the weather conditions are ideal). We had to rehome him unfortunately, because our larger tortoise was really aggressive towards. Then those owners gave him back because they got a dog that wanted to eat him, and because he sexually mature by that time we ended up with a bunch of "oopsie babies" as I call them, since he was male and ours is female. 
