Hi everyone! I’m new to this forum! I’m the proud owner of two budgies, one amazing lutino cockatiel and a wonderful little green cheek conure. I’ll start with giving a little info on each of my birds:

Bluebell is my first bird. She’s a four year old female blue budgie. She’s the one who got me into birds

Ducky is my two year old lutino pearl cockatiel. Ducky was sold to me as male, but I recently learned that Ducky is actually female I still refer to Ducky as “he” for now though. Ducky is the sweetest tiel ever, he begs for skritches and snuggles up to my cheek and closes his eyes. Ducky knows many tricks such as waving, spreading wings, turning around, and even playing basketball. Ducky also loves to fly and is recall trained.

Kermit is my approximately 10 month old yellow sided green cheek conure. He’s the most active and playful of all my birds, and he loves to do acrobatics such as hanging upside down and climbing all over the place. He’s also an incredibly fast flyer and loves to zoom around the room. Like Ducky, he knows a variety of tricks and his favorite one is “flip”, where he does a somersault around the perch. He can be quite a handful, but also really sweet when he wants to be.

The newest addition to our family is Pearl the albino budgie, who is approximately four months old. I think she is a she. She is in love with Ducky and follows him around, but Ducky isn’t fond of her or any of our birds. Pearl is starting to mumble words and I’ve heard her say “pretty bird” and “baby bird” several times. I’m excited to see if Pearl turns out to be a talker, because my other birds don’t talk.

Hello and welcome to the group! Your flock sounds lovely. How did you figure out that Ducky was a girl?

I’m a member of another parrot forum and the members there thought that Ducky was a girl, and then I researched online to confirm it. I’m also doing a DNA test just to be sure and the results will be back in a week. Here is a photo of Ducky:


You can see the pearling on Ducky’s back and apparently male cockatiels lose the pearls after their first molt. Also Ducky doesn’t show any of the male behaviors (whistling, strutting, heartwings, beak banging, hopping, etc.) and has slight tail barring and light yellow spots on the primary flight feathers.

Welcome! I have 2 lovebirds. Actually, I’m also waiting on my DNA test results for Cashew.. They just received the sample today.

I don't see the picture of Ducky, but it does sound like she's a girl. Unless she's actually lutino pearl pied, which can be hard to identify. Pearl pied males can keep their pearls and other baby markings a lot longer than other males.

How can you tell if Ducky is a lutino pearl pied? Ducky also acts like a female, but I don’t know how accurate it is to tell by behavior. Either way, I will know for sure in about a week, and Pearl is getting tested as well. I’m actually not sure with Pearl, because her cere is pink with white around the nostrils, which I heard indicates a female albino budgie. But Pearl is still young and doesn’t have the brown cere yet. What confuses me is that Pearl is chattering a lot and starting to talk, and I read that usually it’s the male budgies that talk.

With a lutino pied bird, there may be patches of feathers that are a brighter yellow than the other feathers. A pied feather will not have any markings on it, like pearls and the normal hen/juvenile wing and tail spots.

Some of the budgie mutations don't follow the normal cere color rules. I'm not an expert on budgies, so I don't know how accurate the information on this site is: https://www.cutelittlebirdiesaviary.com ... dgies.html But it says that a pink to purple cere is the sign of an adult male in albino budgies.

"Albino" is actually a combination of two mutations in all parrots. It's the lutino mutation plus the blue mutation (which is called whiteface in cockatiels). The lutino mutation messes up the melanin pigment a lot, which has an effect on a budgie's cere color. Melanin is involved in the normal blue color of an adult male's cere, so lutinos can't follow the normal cere color rules.

Welcome to the forum, boys and girls!! oh, and you as the owner

welcome