My chcks will be ready to leave after Christmas, and there is one lady who has set her heart on a boy.
There are a couple of them who mumble and try to copy the adult boys, but is there any way I can be sure at this point about their sex?

I took some pictures of one of them, I suspect he's Peregrine but they are absolutely identical right now so it's very difficult to say who is who!

The pictures are of various parts of body and wings, I would be really grateful if someone could identify the sex of this baby.
He has the longest tail feathers with a black tip, I heard somewhere that it means something but can I believe that?

I wanted to post the pictures directly but I get an error message, so I will post the link to the fickr set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/110204793@ ... 963927763/

It's said that wing spot sexing doesn't work at all on a pearl. It doesn't work very well on any other kind of cockatiel either IMO. This year I had three definite female babies (sex-linked mutations) but their wing spots all said male. In the past I've also had male babies with female markings.

The tailfeather method for pearls apparently isn't too reliable either, but if there's little or no grey on the tip it's a female sign. If the grey goes 1/4 to 1/2 of the way up the feather it's a male sign. The article at http://www.internationalcockatielresour ... tiels.html has pictures at the bottom. Based on this I would guess that your baby is a girl but I don't have any confidence in the results. If you really want to know you'll need a DNA test.

Jan, I am gonna keep them with me in the bedroom with my 2 tamest boys, and see how they interact. IF I am lucky, some beak tapping or tentative whistling might happen

Will let you know how it goes!

Sometimes young males go through an experimental phase where they make weird noises just to see what they can do with their voice. So if you hear anything like that the perpetrator is probably a boy. Henry was obnoxious with it, he made the most awful sounds I've ever heard coming out of a cockatiel.

lol yes that's what a couple of them do! it's a mix between someone clearing their voice, mumbling, rasping, quite funny stuff even though not the most musical

They sound like boys!