I'm still watching Peanut. He's still eating well, and his poops look fine, but he remains less active than usual. And he's picked up a new habit: sometimes when he's eating a seedball he stands on his left foot. He'll stand on both feet as he's reaching for another beakful, but once he has seeds in his mouth he goes back to standing on his left foot. The first time he did this I called the vet and brought him back for another quick look. Nothing.

Well, that's probably good news. But I'm still watching.

Now, there's one event I didn't mention last time, which is that Bruce has been away — on the longest trip away from home in awhile. I'm beginning to think this is the underlying factor behind Peanut's change in behavior.

I recently came across the article "Understanding Feather Plucking in Parrots" by Roy A. Earle & Louise Prowse. The article suggests that a bird will start plucking its feathers when "something has gone wrong in the house flock which has upset the stability and probably also the perceived hierarchy structure in the flock." Now, Peanut isn't plucking his feathers, but he has changed his behavior. The article also talks about which creature a bird might consider to be dominant in a household. I'm guessing Peanut thinks he's on top — well, he is the Master of the Universe, and all. But I'll bet that he considers Bruce to be over me in the hierarchy. Oh, sure, we both feed him snacks, but I feed Peanut his regular meals, free of charge. Peanut has to win tasty seeds from Bruce by yelling, lunging at him, and some serious Mind Control.

So it doesn't surprise me that Peanut has been thrown by having the dominant human away from the house for so long. Unfortunately, Bruce will be doing a lot more traveling in the next few months. We'll see what happens.