fajrdrako | Green and yellow feathers....

Domino has come out of the nesting box.

Domino is my budgie who hatched about six weeks ago. When born, he was a tiny, featherless thing whose cheeping sounded like a cricket in my apartment - a very softspoken cricket.

I was able to peek at him a few times, inside the enclosed nesting box. From a bare little thing lying on his back, with big eyes and a triangular head (very like the archetypal alien, but without hands) he became a ball of grey fluff with a big appetite.

No more grey fluff: it has turned into bright green and yellow feathers, with black trim. Now he is a pint-sized mobile budgie, out of the nest and exploring the world. He can't walk very well, and he can't fly at all, though he likes to stretch and flap his wings. Instead he jumps and lurches from perch to perch or wall to wall of the cage. He doesn't handle the perches too well - he tends to slip and end up underneath them, struggling to climb back on top. He'll get the idea soon enough.

His favourite spot is the hamster wheel. He can run, he can flap, he can sit; he's partially enclosed but in the open - for the moment, that's his spot.

When I covered the cage last night, the adult budgies, as they usually do, stretched and yawned and got ready to sleep. Domino screeched, jumped off his perch, and scrambled to the only haven of safety he could find - the floor of the cage underneath the nesting box.

When I came home from work just now, I caught his parents boffing. And Wisdom is sitting on another egg.

Uh-oh.