Smidge the cockatiel is reunited with his owner after chirping The Addams Family theme tune

A cockatiel that escaped its cage was reunited with his owner after he was discovered up a tree chirping The Addams Family theme tune.

Smidge flew off after his owner Rhys Owen, 31, accidentally left his cage open when putting him in his car outside his home in Hoylake, Merseyside.

Mr Owen turned to Facebook in an attempt to find the bird appealing to residents how he answered to The Addams Family theme tune – a song he taught him for fun.

The 31-year-old was reunited with his pet just five hours later, when Smidge was two miles away singing the theme to 1964 TV adaption of the show which features a macabre family.

Mr Owen was alerted to his pet's whereabouts after a social-media user commented that a bird had been found in a tree at a farm.

Mr Owen said: "I was devastated [when Smidge went missing], I was absolutely heartbroken. Even though I have only had him a few months he was part of my routine. Every morning he sits on my shoulder and we have breakfast together, he is awesome.

"I got so attached to him, when we lost him it was a sad time."

When farm workers heard an unusual tune among the twittering of birds in a tree they went to investigate and spotted Smidge.

Mr Owen explained: "The only thing that made him sound different to the other birds was that he was singing the Addams Family. That's when they knew there was something strange about him."

Smidge learnt the Addams Family theme tune after Rhys and his girlfriend Katy O'Shea, 39, taught him it by playing it to him on YouTube videos when he was a week old.

Mr Owen said:  "We played it a lot of times every day for maybe two weeks over and over again and before you know it he was mimicking it.