September 2004: The aviary has gone through a number of changes. The birds are out most of the time now. I've discovered that no matter how many things I gave them to chew on, they always wanted to gnaw on something important. The fakus trees are gone. One week with the birds stripped their tops of leaves, and since they're only made of silk and plastic, I wasn't holding out much hope of them growing back. The window frames were replaced, and then the tops redone with a solid piece of pine. It's the only way to keep the birds from landing on the frame and chewing the larger beams. I'm fine with them destroying things I can pull out and replace, but I draw the line at major construction features. I also added the lattice pieces to the windows to make more of a visible barrier. The tweets seem to understand the interior windows pretty well, but they were always making dashes for what they thought was the great outdoors. BONK!!

Luna waits patiently on the top of the cage for his first molt, when his clipped wings will grow out and he will finally be able to fly like the others. I'm certain he's getting an inferiority complex about all this. Happily, his feathers are finally starting to come in, and he's starting to make hopeful attempts at flying. He's still terrible at it, but another couple of weeks ought to do the trick. I say "he" but in truth we're still waiting for his molt to tell us for sure what the gender is. Soleil's we knew. And Soleil's...ahem...ardor for Piper tells us that she is apparently female. We also have guessed that Finn is a male, because 1) he acts like one, and 2) Soleil is so violently opposed to him hanging out with Piper that we're guessing that he can only be competition, and therefore male. Luna is neither an object of Soleil's affection or annoyance so there are no hints there. We just have to wait until the adult plumage comes in to be sure.

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