Ovaltine really loves eggs. He sees the dish coming, starts chirping, clings to the wall, and gets all twisty in anticipation. Then he drops to the floor and trips all over things to get to the dish. Oh, other Finsters like eggs, too, but not as much as Ovaltine. Ovaltine loves eggs as much as Peanut loves tasty seeds, which is saying a lot.

You can click here to see a close up of this picture — the object that looks like a hole in his head (outlined in pink) is his ear. Kinda gruesome, if you haven't seen a bird's ear before. The picture also clearly illustrates his feather damage, and the fact that his lower beak is currently a little longer than his upper beak. This happened in the past few weeks.

In my (rather limited) experience, an overgrown beak can mean two things: liver damage, or inbreeding. Not much to do for either of them: liver damage suggests a lower-protein diet, but since he's living in a community flight, it's difficult to do. I'll have to stop giving him so many eggs, poor thing, but he likes millet spray almost as much. As for the inbreeding, the only thing to do is make sure he doesn't breed himself. Also difficult to do in a community, but since I'm not encouraging any breeding in the Finsterium (no nesting material), things should be okay. Of course, if that beak gets much longer I'll have to catch him and trim it.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the more likely culprit is inbreeding. His feather damage most likely comes from zealous preening by the other birds, but his lack of coordination suggests he's not the strongest of birds. His wings seem a little droopy sometimes, too. He also has a funny habit of fluttering his wings. At first I thought he was cold, or feeling poorly, but then it clicked: he was begging for food like a baby! I don't think this behavior has anything to do with either inbreeding or liver damage; maybe he's still very young. Or a little crazy.

Unfortunately, he's been looking a little under the weather lately. He seems to be eating more, and sleeping more, and I've hardly seen him singing his Hunka Hunka Burning Love song, and dancing his Hunka Hunka Burning Love dance. The Arctic breeze coming through Michigan makes it practically impossible to take him to the vet, but his condition finally motivated us to arrange a basking light in a useful, permanent spot that doesn't jut into the kitchen and take up any of the precious space not already taken up by the Finsterium.

You can click here for a big version of this second photo of twisty Ovaltine.