No, this is not about a Latin jazz band or a little Salsa congunto, but it might have been... Why would I give an indigenous Australian grass parrot a Spanish name? Well, we gave our South African born daughter a Spanish name too. One of our Scot Greys was named Carlos too. Blame it on the passion for the beat. So this is the continued saga of Rico, the baby neophema parrot.

Now this debate has been raging in our home for the last three weeks, and I’m not over-dramatising when I say raging! The family were saying that because neophemas are flock birds, Rico needs friends. I was saying, until Rico is 100% well, he or his to-be new companions may get killed – that is, if there is a killer on the loose. But we don’t know… and from our attempts at observation over a few weeks, it seems there is no way of knowing. A good friend of mine suggested a surveillance camera, and another good friend gave my son a little spy camera ages ago which I guess we could have tried mounting. But even so you may still miss any adverse event. So this debate has been going backwards and forwards for quite a while.

Despite my reservations, on Wednesday my son had the day off school, so they went rollerblade and bird “hunting”. Patricia came back with very nice blades, and my son came back with three beautiful adult neophemas. Even though I had a lot of budgies when I was a teenager – and they generated good pocket money back then – I was more of a big bird person. We even had an African Grey for quite a number of years. But I must say these colourful little neophemas are quite something. They’re absolutely beautiful!

We had them in the carry cage with Rico for about 24 hours, and then they were set free in the aviary.

So now we’re watching with great interest how things are developing in the aviary. Here are some pictures of the new crew. Meet Phoenix and Arizona, and Twist.

So far they have been settling in nicely and little Rico seems to be doing fine and staying out of harm’s way.