A missing pet parrot has been safely returned to his Great Yarmouth home and is now sharing his perch with another feathered friend – thanks for the power of social media.

Sydney, the African grey, fluttered out of the back door of his home on Wednesday last week while his owner Linda Cox was cleaning out his cage. A worried and concerned Linda immediately began a search but by Friday had given up hope.

Out of her sorrow however, she struck upon a last-ditch idea to bring Sydney back.

Linda, 52, said: 'I went into the pet shop in town where we bought Sydney and they had another one. The man advised me not to but I said the way my life is, if I buy that parrot Sydney will come home. We bought the new parrot on Friday and then we got telephone calls over the weekend to say somebody had found Sydney – so I have now two African greys!' Sydney was found in the town after swooping down on to a man's shoulder on Saturday.

Thanks to an appeal on the Facebook page of our sister paper, the Great Yarmouth Mercury, posted on Friday, the man was able to contact Linda via her phone number which was printed in the paper.

Sydney was taken to a neighbour who keeps birds where he was looked after until Linda – who was in Stoke on Trent over the weekend – could collect him on Sunday.

The grandmother-of-one said: 'I'm ecstatic. It's a wonderful story, I keep looking at him thinking are you really home?'

Sydney, who will be two years old in September, is recovering from his adventure at home in Bermondsey Place East, while getting to know his new baby feathered friend, three-month-old Alfie.

'Sydney seems absolutely fine but was obviously exhausted and hungry and he's probably a bit put out because there's another bird here,' Linda added.

'We put them on the rope together and Sydney wasn't too happy, his only child syndrome isn't up just yet.

'Hopefully they'll grow to be good friends.'

Linda, who also owns Rhodesian ridgebacks that she shows professionally, thanked everyone who had helped bring Sydney home, and said they are now getting his wings clipped to stop him disappearing again.

She said: 'We put posters up everywhere and told everyone from the postman to the police to the traffic warden.

'We were getting calls from everywhere. Thank you so much.'