In the 'Dead Parrot' sketch, what species of bird is the dead parrot?

In the “Dead Parrot” sketch, what species of bird is the dead parrot? Norwegian Blue. The customer identifies the bird as a Norwegian Blue, while the shopkeeper refuses to accept that it has died and claims that it is “pining for the fjords.”

“Norwegian Blue” is a fictional designation created for the sketch, not a recognised living parrot species. The joke works partly because the name sounds plausible but combines an evocative colour with a geographical label that does not describe a real parrot breed. The sketch treats the name with complete seriousness while everything about the bird's condition proves otherwise.

The sketch originally appeared in the first series of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in the episode “Full Frontal Nudity,” broadcast on 7 December 1969. John Cleese plays the customer and Michael Palin plays the shopkeeper, whose increasingly absurd explanations lead to the famous list of euphemisms for death.

A related source of confusion is the bird used in later versions. In the film And Now for Something Completely Different, the parrot was depicted as a blue-and-gold macaw. That visual variation does not change the answer for the original television sketch: its dead bird is the imaginary Norwegian Blue.