There's a new addition to our multitude of animals!

This afternoon, my dad brought home a stray peachfaced lovebird that flew into his office. The poor little guy (or girl, lets face it birds can be a bit tough to tell in that respect) was so tired that within 20 minutes of being relocated to his new cage, in a strange place with strange noisy animals all around, tucked his head under his wing and fell asleep

It's impossible to tell how long he's been on his own, though he's missing one of the main claws on his left foot; it was probably bitten off in a fight with some other birds, and has been gone long enough for it to have healed over into a stub.

Even so, he's not terrified of us, in fact I was able to pick him up out of the box he was brought home in and transfer him to the cage bare-handed without him seriously freaking out or trying to bite me. And he's happy to sleep despite being in a strange place with strange animals around, which says to me that he's quite comfortable around people.

So now it's just a matter of trying to get him used to being handled, because I'd much prefer to let him live outside the cage as much as possible. I don't like keeping them trapped behind bars if it can be helped (Pip stays out all day when I'm home, in fact my bed is his personal pooping ground if I don't keep an eye on him). If he won't take to it there's not much I can do, but given how he reacted when I held him before I reckon he was probably people-trained already.

Then the only other obstacle will be whether or not he and Pippin, my cockatiel, can make friends. Given that Pip has fallen in love with shoes, blankets, pillows, feet, dogs, chickens and pedobear, I reckon he'll be able to adapt to the new arrival. It'll probably just take some time. And the little one, well, it's a LOVEbird, so hopefully that means something and it'll want to be friends too.

Now I just need a name. Hopefully the family will leave it up to me, because I don't think I can go through another one of our three-week nomination, veto and then three-hour ballot naming processes like we did will ALL the other animals (with the exception of Pip). I'm leaning towards Merry at the moment (as in Merry and Pippin from Lord of The Rings, why yes I am that much of a geek), hopefully I'll be able to use the argument that as he'll probably be entirely my responsibility, I should have naming rights.

We'll see how it goes.