Birds and buildings

We have a number of birds, among which are 3 Indian Ringnecks.  Tweety, the yellow one, is about 10 years old and most definitely a male as he used to be a breeder.  Mr. P was our first ringneck.  He is green, a traditional color, and is a little over 3 years old.  The last one is Ricci, a blue one.  He is a little over two years old. When we got Tweety he was already and adult and had his adult plumage.  We got Mr. P as a 12 week old baby, but when he was around 18 months old he went through a major molt and he developed his ring - that indicates a male.

Ricci is now over 2 years old and never developed the ring.  For the last 6 - 8 months I have been assuming he's a she.  I even went so far as to get another cage to separate the 3 ringnecks because I did not want 2 boys and 1 girl in 1 cage.  A little over a week ago I started to notice that Ricci looked pretty messy.  His feathers looked like he was having a really bad hair day.  I've kept an eye on him because when molting they really look bad, and  I'm always afraid something may be going wrong. So I've been watching him pretty closely.  I've also noticed that Mr. P. was looking a little raggedy too but not near as bad as Ricci.

Then, last night I went in to put them to bed and this is what I saw:

Ricci has a ring!!! Look at how scraggly he looks!!!  But that ring literally sprung up overnight.  He did not have it the day before, or even earlier in the day.  But by last night it was clearly visible. His colors are also changing. They are getting a really pretty blue.

In other news, the yard will be changing and I don't know what the dogs will think about it.  We are planning on building a deck out back and it's going to break up the yard some.  I've applied for a building permit and drawn up some plans (ha!!!).  Now we just have to start lining up materials.  Since working at Walgreens, I have seen the power of coupons and I'm seriously looking around for some. I've even heard there are lowe's coupons at dropdowndeals. Awesome!!! I'm very excited to get the deck built. I think it will be awesome. Since it's going to be pretty high off the ground, maybe we could leave the underneath open so the dogs can still race around the yard. Could be interesting....