...the hospital cage, that is. Actually, I'd noticed a nearly-naked Spice finch doing a lot of sleeping on top of a nest box before I left, and assumed that it was Nutmeg. But as it turned out, the sleeping bird may have been (or may also have been) Peppercorn (Mélènge). With Nutmeg dying so suddenly, Bruce turned the heat lamp on just in case, and there was Peppercorn (Mélènge) sleeping in the light.

Or trying to. You see, a very nicely-feathered Spice finch — probably Cinnamon, since he's the prettiest male — has been trying to establish his territory by mounting all the other Spice finches. Especially the naked ones. This is fairly typical behavior from aggressive birds, and I've been noticing it in the Finsterium for the past month or so. It must be mating season in Cinnamon's head.

No doubt, his behavior contributed to Nutmeg's stress levels, and it was certainly making it hard for Peppercorn (Mélènge) to rest in the light. So we caught him up first thing yesterday morning, while it was still nearly dark, and took him to the vet. Normally, I might have just popped him into the hospital cage for a nice, quiet rest, but with Nutmeg dying so suddenly, we weren't in the mood to take chances.

(Um, no, I still haven't buried her. Weird, I know, but it just makes it so final. Soon. Really. Really.)

The vet had no new clues: his eyes and mouth looked good, his lungs sounded good. But he was very thin. To be honest, the vet didn't seem very optimistic about his chances.

So he's back home, on a course of antibiotics, a little bored, but surrounded by all the tasty things I can think for him to eat. There are so many tiny dishes of food (caps from vitamin bottles work well) that he can barely get to them all. Soaked seeds and corn remain the favorites, but he also has egg food, quinoa, spinach, moistened crumbles, and anything else I can think of.

Since he has a lot of feather damage around his neck, it's pretty easy to tell if his crop is full — although he's probably a little annoyed that I keep looking at him all the time. "Not much rest here!" he's probably saying. His crop often has food in it when I look, but he's still thin. I can feel his breastbone, which is a bad sign.