When Seif Sulthan, founder of Hope Foundation, and a management trainer was travelling by car with his wife, they saw a bird being attacked by a cat near Highland Hospital in Falnir, Mangaluru, on Sunday. Thinking it was a pigeon, Seif rushed to save the bird, and he was in for a surprise.

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"I had an umbrella in the car and pushed the cat away. I realised that it was not a pigeon but something that resembled a parrot. The bird wasn't moving so I wrapped it in a cloth and put it in our car," he said.

Doing his best to revive the bird, Seif took it to the vet and that's when he knew that what he had saved was indeed special.

"The vet, who identified the bird as an African grey parrot, said it was worth Rs 2-2.5 lakh. He gave some medicines and sprayed something on its face and said we could take the bird. We then bought a cage for it and gave it some food," said Seif.

It was then that Seif noticed a tag on the bird's left leg. The next step was to find its owner. So Seif and his wife went to two veterinarians at Jeppu and Jail Road and told them that they had found a rare bird. They also shared the tag number in four shops that sell birds. "We then decided to put up a post on Facebook. The post went viral, and I got calls from people saying they were willing to keep the bird," he said.

"In 25 minutes, I got a call from the owner who said his Mittoo was missing since three days. After verifying details, we handed the bird over to its owner, Mansoor Azad. The owner told us that the bird had flown away three days ago and may not have eaten anything," he said. And the owner was right. "The moment we kept water in front of it, Mitto lapped it up."

The sight of the reunion was amazing, according to Seif. "It jumped on his hand and started kissing him all over. They even started talking. Since it was a talking bird, we tried speaking to it in Konkani, Tulu and Kannada," said Seif.

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Mansoor Azad, owner of the bird, a businessman, stays in Kaprigudde, which is about 1.5 km from where the bird was found. When he lost the bird, he searched for it everywhere. After two hours, he even got a call from a tender coconut seller, saying that there was bird and a hawk was attacking it. They assumed it had been devoured. They still intended to file a missing complaint. That was when they heard from Seif.

Mansoor said, "It was indeed a miracle to get back Mittoo."

"The bird is very fond of me. On Saturday morning, it just flew away. I was really worried and searched everywhere possible and even followed it for a while. We kept asking our neighbours if they had seen the bird. I did not sleep the whole night. Finally, I could not believe it when my son told be about the Facebook post. Mittoo has been with the family for over a year and everyone loves it."