This photo was taken a few minutes before Olive left for the night the other evening. She's becoming sort of predictable when she's about to leave. She looks left, right, up, down, then opens and closes her beak a couple of times. Finally, she seems to be adjusting her shoulders, leans out and flies away. I'm pretty sure that this bird is NOT Oliver, but whether it's our Olive, or another female, is not really known to us. I think it's not Oliver for 2 reasons - one is that she always flies out of the box and makes an immediate left (for her) turn, flying north. The other reason I think it's not Oliver is that she sits in the opening of the box for only 10-15 minutes or so. Oliver used to sit in the opening for some 45 minutes each night. If we could get a full frontal view of her, we could see if she had the spots on her chest that Olive had, or we could see if she (he) has the spot that looks like an upside down hockey stick on her right side (which Oliver had).
