Prairie's battle for Chicken's attention went on and was leading to much upset on his part and irritation on Piglet and Chicken's part - they are sleek and glossy and healthy, but not happy. So I went out to find a new bird to be Prairie's pet bird. I didn't want another girl - I'm told parakeets can also bond with male friends, and I really don't want to raise baby parakeets if I can help it, and while you can find a ton of advice on the web on "how to encourage mating" you can't find much on how to discourage it (ultimately that may be because the only way to discourage it is not to have a girl bird) so, no more girls, thanks. So, the fourth bird was a compilation of everything we've learned so far about the first three. One, don't pick it just because it's cute. Two, pick one that is calm. Three, pick one that's actually interested in what the heck you're doing. In this case, four was that this cute little calm interested one was also running around with a snap bean which means hooray, he doesn't think vegetables are murder weapons! We got him, brought him home, and put him in quarantine. Where he sat in the bottom of the cage not moving for a day and a half, with runny green-only poop. Oh boy - do we have a sick bird? No white could mean the kidneys are shutting down, because that's the urea, so I had to get some water into that bird fast. I opened the door and inserted a stick of millet, which startled him into flying out of the corner and onto the bridge, which is good because it also peeved him enough at being startled that he started fitfully cleaning his feet, which was the first activity I'd seen. I dipped the millet into his water and got him to eat a bit of it, and he seemed much relieved. I hand fed him this way with wet millet every couple of hours for a couple of days, and soon his releases were normal in every way. I also enjoyed the interactive time talking with and feeding him. I had gotten him the second day of a two-week vacation to be sure I could spend a lot of time with him every day - any project I could move to the living room where we had him I did, and he had about seven hours a day of human company with three feedings, reading aloud, noises from video games, clinking of craft projects, and frequent personal talk. He absolutely refused vegetables even though they were properly boiled and presented regularly. Even vegetables on a stick were not interesting. But by ignoring his impatient peeps at my impertinence by not feeding him on time, I got him to go check out the seed dishes and start feeding himself. I did not get to sleep in during my vacation as anything past 8:30 meant the bird would loudly begin calling for me, louder the longer it was before I appeared. So my husband (who works swing shift) would laugh as I staggered blearily by the office door clutching whatever I was supposed to work on downstairs and mumbling "I'm here, I'm on my way, hang on a minute...."

This bird is an olive avocado-toned bird, much like the standard green parakeet but more muted in tone, and he has a yellow streak in his tail that Piglet doesn't have. He learns quickly from just verbal comments and instructions with a few gestures to help. He is very calm and extremely charming - even my husband who does not particularly like the birds told me "you know, this one's cute." It helped a great deal that when my husband, who is 6'2" and wears a lot of black clothing, came to stand by the cage and talk to the bird, the bird did not flip out. Husband has a much higher estimation of the common sense of this bird. Because of his black and olive tones I considered naming him Camo, but as he began sitting on my hand to have his millet feedings I found him extremely soft, and the olive feathers blur softly into each other. The final deciding factor was that he was such a patient and charming little prince (when he wasn't lonely at 8:30 in the morning), so he got named Velvet. After two weeks, he had realized the other birds were in the house, and was doing things like planting himself on the side of the cage hanging by his beak and stubbornly refusing to move no matter how I cajoled him until I realized he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror in the next room over. So it was time for me to give up my personal buddy and introduce him to the other birds (whose fights over Chicken were continuing anyway).

Day one - Prairie is not sure what to do with this thing. He's reacting a lot like Chicken and Piglet did to him at first, mostly ignoring Velvet. Chicken is freaked out, and Piglet looks bewildered. It is amazing to see the difference between the birds as well, because Velvet is less than a year old and weighs perhaps an ounce dripping wet, and is a scale smaller than the other birds in every way. I did not realize how fat and happy they had grown in our care, but next to Velvet they look like 2 ounce monster birds. Velvet is trying to fly where ever they do, but they run when he comes, which is rather sad but not as bad as when it happened with Prairie because Prairie was devastated by it while Velvet visibly shrugs it off and follows them to the next branch. He has some trouble when they fly across the aviary, because his wings are clipped. Prairie was lucky when we first got him because he was just about to moult, so his wing feathers grew in almost immediately and he was already able to fly better by the time he joined the group. But for Velvet it takes a great deal of effort because he has no lift, so he gets halfway across the aviary and flutters down to the floor. He requires a great deal of wing beating to maintain altitude, and the feathers are all over the place, so he looks like a little fluttercopter. He gets to the opposite side of the aviary and then climbs up with beak and claw from whatever part of the wall he landed on. I put millet in the cage, and Velvet landed on my arm to get to it, which caused a mass reaction of stunned disbelief on the part of the other birds and they think he's a double agent. This did not speed his acceptance in the flock.

Day two - Velvet has figured out the feeding and playpen platform in the middle of the aviary is a good resting spot. He's having much better success now by flying from one side to the middle to the other side instead of a straight shot. Prairie is starting to try to talk to him, tapping his beak and warbling to him. Piglet and Chicken seem relieved at the break from Prairie's harrassment.

Day three - Velvet is still often separate from the main group, but seems ok with it when he is. He doesn't seem much impressed with Prairie, and Piglet seems to have decided that Velvet is a half-size killer robot disguised as a bird because Piglet runs whenever Velvet comes around even though Chicken is getting used to him. Conversation tonight consisted of much repetition of "Piglet, he's a baby, which Chicken seemed to understand just fine and calm right down, and Prairie seemed to understand though not be thrilled with.

Day four - Velvet is disappointed in me. He doesn't see me during the day now because I'm at work, so he hangs back and looks sulky and hurt when I come in to talk to the group. You're not supposed to pay particular attention to one bird over the others and I'm having trouble reconciling that with the degree of attention and talk I gave him the past two weeks. Obviously, so is he, and I'm sorry for it, so I'm fudging a little and talking to him a lot, or talking to him until he closes his eyes, then looking at another bird as I say how wonderful he is (which takes some doing, because he closes his eyes (cute little flirty eyelashes!) and does the "I'm a super-happy bird" thing of grinding his lower beak against the inside of his upper one when I croon to him, but he keeps opening his eyes to check that I'm still looking at him). Much two-faced parakeet complimenting going on, on my part.

Day five - Piglet seems to be correct about Velvet being a half-size killer robot disguised as a bird. I watched Velvet chase Piglet around today, which was rather cute because he had his mouth wide open so his beak tip stuck out and his little pink tongue was showing, and he was running around like this after Piglet, but also rather disturbing because parakeets aren't supposed to be either territorial or dominant, and here's my little charming well-mannered prince poking his beak out at people. They have enough space in the aviary that the chase could go on all day and the bird being chased never get caught, so I'm not worried about anyone getting hurt, but it's an absurd scene. Used other birds to teach Velvet to shred lettuce, and he learned to get water from the drip-bottle from watching Piglet. I think I'm going to have to rearrange some of the scenery in the cage because as it was there was space for three birds, after some jostling, to agree on who was going to sit where to share food, but for four birds it's not well placed, and I'm having to do a lot of reminders "Share!" I need to move the second water drip out of the quarantine cage and back into the aviary too.

Day seven - Chicken seems to have decided she doesn't like Piglet that well after all. She's gone from zealously defending a high perch with him to moving off the perch when he comes around. I don't know if she decided he wasn't that impressive while he was running from the minibird (Velvet has since given up this pastime) but she's running cold to his affections. This in turn has gotten Prairie away from Velvet and back to trying to feed Chicken and she's not pecking him in the head. If Velvet were slightly older he'd certainly be in the running and win, but as it is who knows how this love quadrangle is going to work out. Prairie was greatly jealous of time I spent with Velvet (reacting by skinnying up a bit and fixing a beady eye on it while pulling back) but I've tried to give him more feedback and he's settled down a lot. He's unhappy now because Velvet and Piglet come to me to get millet but he isn't brave enough to sit right by me, so he sulks about not getting any instead. Will see if he gets over this after enough days without millet (he's not being starved by any means, he still has the regular seed mix, but the parakeets like millet about as much as a cat likes catnip). Chicken even came up to eat the last time, so good progress in getting enough sane birds in the flock to sway her into more reasonable behavior. If the whole love thing doesn't work out, or if they start actually breeding, I may have to give up Chicken after all in favor of another male bird. If so I won't let her go to anything but a loving and patient home.

Two months later - Velvet has settled in pretty well but we do still have a lot of bird politics. No one has settled down with anyone at this point, because Velvet noticed Chicken was a girl, and while she has no interest in him, he now plants himself in between Chicken and anyone who comes courting. Avacado dwarf feathered birth control. Hubbie has not settled on referring to all of them as "the noisy tennis balls." Here, at last, thanks to honey's early Christmas present to me of an *awesome* camera, a great picture of the boids! Left to right, Velvet, Chicken, Piglet and Prairie. Being very good and pretty calm, although Chicken skinnied up a bit, the other guys trust enough now to just go "what are you doing with that black thing on your face?" Velvet doing his flirty-eyes happy face, "I love you so much I am going to close my eyes and revel in you telling me how cute I am." Perhaps later on they'll be calm enough to "poof" into the tennis ball shapes for me to post pictures. ^_^