The bird appears to be an entirely ordinary parrot. When it speaks, however, it utters the words of a magical spell, and arcane energy begins to swirl around it.

Spell parrots are an exceedingly rare and unexplained phenomenon. They look, think, and act primarily like parrots, despite high intelligence for an animal. No one knows why they are able to do what they do though it is clear that the ability they possess is as likely to be a burden as a boon to them. When spell parrots first hear and mimic a spellcaster, they rarely seem to understand or expect the results of their mimicry. Older wild spell parrots have usually learned how to utilize their strange and unpredictable powers but rarely will do so unless threatened.

Spell parrots can be tamed as pets, but since they occur spontaneously (within any of the larger parrot species), it is difficult to discover one young enough to socialize it properly. Careful training by someone with exceptional animal handling skills can result in a spell parrot that only mimics spells at a signal from its humanoid handler. However, they can be cantankerous creatures, and moody, with questionable senses of humor, and even the best-trained spell parrot may choose to disobey its handler.

Like mundane parrots, spell parrots often live a little longer than humans, and while they cannot become fluent in humanoid languages, they can memorize small vocabularies and engage in rudimentary verbal communication. Talking to a well-trained spell parrot is similar in clarity, depth, grammar, and logic to communication with a small toddler.

Elder Spell Parrot

An elder spell parrot is capable of attempting to mimic even higher level spells. It has the following changes:

Its Challenge Rating is 6 (2,300 XP).

It has 7 (5d4 - 5) hit points.

Its Spell Mimicry feature is as follows: Spell Mimicry. Whenever the spell parrot hears a cantrip or a 1st through 8th level spell that has a verbal component being cast, it can attempt to mimic the casting of that spell on its next turn. The spell parrot ignores any somatic or material component that the spell requires. When the spell parrot attempts to mimic the spell, roll a d6. If the spell is a cantrip or a 1st through 3rd level spell, the casting succeeds if the result is a 3-6. If the spell is 4th through 6th level, the casting succeeds on the result of a 5 or 6. If the spell is 7th or 8th level, the casting succeeds only on a 6. Once the spell parrot mimics a spell, it forgets it. The spell parrot uses the original caster's spell save DC and spell attack bonus, and the spell must have a valid target for the spell parrot to use as the target of the mimicked spell.