7 January and it's not time to let go...

Life has a way of knocking us down a peg or two when we become over-confident in your abilities (especially when we might not have 'earned' the right to be just yet). It happens to the best of us, and there's always a valuable lesson to be learnt.

Our little chick had its turn learning the lesson this morning.

The chick had been in the pot plant nest for a while, playing around with whatever it could find to gnaw, bite and pounce on. Eventually the chick became bored and jumped out of the nest onto the wooden perches. This jump it managed with success, but shortly thereafter, our chick learned its lesson.

The chick opened its wings up and began flapping like there was no tomorrow. But it forgot one important thing: Do not let go of the perch.

In its enthusiasm (and perhaps, over-confidence), the chick let go, overshot the perch and flapped down to the balcony floor.

Completely unscatched, but looking mighty surprised and confused by the change in its postion, our chick attempted to get back into the pot plant nest - with no success. PPO visited the chick on the floor of the balcony and the chick soon calmed down - realising that the great trek back up into the tall pot plant nest was not going to happen - not today anyway.

The rest of the day, our explorer dozed in a corner on the balcony floor. PPO was on the wooden perch, keeping a watchful eye over her chick, and even joined the little one on the floor for a short 'talk'.

To assist the chick in getting back up to the nest, we pushed a parrot's jungle gym onto the balcony floor. It is half the height of the pot plant container. If the chick can negotiate getting onto the jungle gym, it should have no trouble hopping back up to the wooden perches.

If it makes it back up tonight, I suspect that our little explorer will be more cautious when flapping its wings - and not let go!