I swear, this is like cooking a souffle. You can't take a single step wrong or the whole thing collapses. Still, we've gotten this far so let's see if you can get this baby out of the oven!

"Can I help you?" asked the leader.

Pinion cleared its throat, aware of the precarious nature of this conversation. "Forgive me, I don't know your name."

The leader hesitated before it answered. "There isn't much point in me telling you my name. The leadership changes quite often in our flock."

"Oh," Pinion answered, backing off from this line of questioning, which seemed to be a sensitive issue for some reason. "Well, that's what I wanted to talk about actually. Your group seems so... complex, and I was wondering how it all works. How do you all decide who gets to be the leader?"

"It doesn't really matter who is the leader, our flock is quite equal all around," the leader told Pinion.

"But surely there have to be, I don't know, rights to food or nesting sites?" Pinion countered.

"We don't do that here," the leader answered. "There's plenty of food so we don't need to fight for it, and the keeper sprinkles it all around so no one parakeet can defend it."

Pinion thought for a moment. "And nesting?"

"That's not a problem either." It offered no more explanation.

"So how do you know that you're the leader?"

"I... I think I'm good at showing initiative," it said, its tone betraying the fact that it was pulling these thoughts together even as it spoke, "and talking to the whole group when every bird here needs to hear news. I fight sometimes, if I need to - but I rarely need to," it continued hurriedly.

The leader's fear of Pinion was obvious enough and still, Pinion itself had no idea why, but would the flamingo ever get a better chance to broach the subject?

Pinion's right, you know, this does seem like a unique opportunity. How do you want it to ask?