Baps died last night.

Those of you who met him know he was really small (and vocal!) and was only about as big as a 2-3 week old baby, though he was a little over four weeks. He would have been five weeks old tomorrow. We aren't sure what happened. He wasn't sick, and he wasn't attacked. He was happy and healthy and there wasn't anything wrong with him. The only thing we can think of is that he might have had a heart attack. If he had a weak heart then he would have been smaller than normal--and boy was he that!--but he still would have acted normal and happy--which he also did. There was no cause of death that we could find. A weak heart is the only thing that makes sense, and it happens with birds sometimes.

He did get old enough to learn how to come out of the nesting box on his own, and he was able to see the world before he died because I had to take him to school (and subcons!) and he got to do all the fun things birds normally like. Unfortanetly, there is no such thing as a birdy-heart-transplant, so there wasn't anything that could have been done even if we'd known.

He hatched a week younger than the others (which is stunning in bird time; he was MUCH smaller) and somehow managed to be so pushy that he got fed. Normally, the parents don't feed babies that much smaller, but he would put his little chest against his brothers and shove until they moved and he could eat, too! In fact, as he got older (but not much bigger) and his siblings got older (and much bigger) he continued to push them around, completely ignoring the fact that they were two times as large as he was! Eventually he started knocking over the mug of food, running around the room after me, and even made it out of the nesting box a week early, because he was bored! He was the noisiest bird I ever have had, and you guys amazed me by keeping him out even though he was making that HORRIBLE bapping sound. You impressed me; he eventually did stop! <grin>

He was very loving; would cuddle and follow me around, even when his siblings were doing normal birdy things like running around imitating maniacs and trying to fly. Before he died, he got in most of his feathers. He had a bright yellow head, with yellow feathers on his upper back and black feathers all over. He was covered in little yellow dots, and had white flight feathers. He had really bad balance, and discovered that if he fell in the seed dish it would spray the seed all over the floor and then I'd have to come clean it up--and usually I would pick him up at that time, too! He thought that was a pretty good trick. <grin>