Lockdown

Over the weekend the keets flew up to the top edge of the box and perched for a moment before going back inside. It's a 24" high jump/flight. Their reward is not a gold medal, but chicken wire over the top.

The feathers are coming in all over their body now. The order they appear is something like: wings, tail, back, and shoulder. Their heads and necks are still baby-like.

Yesterday I thought I'd give them a nice natural perch on which to stand, because the teddy bear is just too crowded now. Their reaction was something like bloody murder, or as though they were about to be put on the butcher block. They flew into walls, into the water container, into each other. There was dust, food, and feathers flying all over the place. And the noise, Oy Vey! After the initial scattering, they piled into the corner farthest from the wood, and I mean piled: they were jumping all over each other trying to get as far away and hidden as possible from this big, mean, bad stick.

So I pulled the stick out... and got a much, much smaller one. Oddly enough, same reaction! But not quite as much bumping and flying and so on. Just the piling into the corner. My friend Kerrie and I pulled two out, thinking that would help calm the near panic state. Those two in our hands didn't calm down much, but the main group did get a bit better -- they stopped piling onto each other, but sat in a corner where the stick couldn't see them. We put the two others back in, and that situation didn't change for around an hour. Slowly they went back to their usual routine, but sheesh, because of a stick?!