What mutation is this boy? What splits does he show?
I have never seen one like him before.

The yellow patches on the back of his neck are perfectly symmetric.
You can see the difference in colour between his wings and the body.





He also has a lot of white around his eyes





Below, the contrast between his colours and Sesamo's, who is, I was told, a Cinnamon Pearl Pied
He is very light but not yellowish nor brownish like she is




end of part I

Part II

His chest is a bit yellowish, maybe; very delicate colour, I can't give it a name




Generic back pic below. Is he clipped?





In this pic below I used the flash... all kinds of tones came out



end of part II

Part III

Generic 3/4 pic




Front pic with flash on




The head again. Sorry it's a crappy blurry pic but I wanted to show the pattern, it looks like it's been painted




What you think? I looked at pictures but I have no idea what this little fella is.
He is about 4 and 1/2 yo

End

I was thinking cinnamon but later on he looked fallow but now i'm really not sure.

What color are his eyes? That might give us a clue.

I think he's cinnamon split pied, with more of a yellow wash than average - look at how bright his face color is. Increased yellow suffusion can be genetic, but it can also be a sign of liver disease. I'm inclined to think that he's healthy and this is genetic, but I'm no expert and if the owners want to be sure it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a vet check.

I don't think he's emerald or dominant silver. These mutations can have a slightly greenish look due to increased yellow, but he doesn't have the other characteristics of these mutations. You can see pictures of these mutations by going to Susanne's website at http://www.justcockatiels.net/index.html and clicking on the Mutations tab.

What about those whitish marks on his upper back and wings? They look a lot like Frank's ghost pearls, just very much lighter of course.

The eyes seem black, but I am not the best at colours, even Angelina's eyes seem black to me. To check the eye colour will it be ok if I take a close photo of his face with the flash on?

I am checking Susanne's photos right now.

Fallow eyes don't darken with age the way lutino eyes do, so if he was fallow he should have obvious bright red eyes.

Emerald and DS can have sort of a 'ghost pearling' effect. I don't think it looks quite like that, but I'm not an expert on the rare mutations. DS in particular can take several years for the full coloration to develop.

I'm not convinced that ghost pearling is really a sign of a pearl split. Buster and Pip have it but so far they've given me spot gene babies not pearl babies. It seems to be a very common marking for males and I don't know whether it really means anything. Susanne is a great observer and might pick up on subtle variations that the rest of us miss, making her better at interpreting the signs than other people are.

He surely isn't a dominant silver because beak and feet are quite light in colour. So unless the split pied gives him that characteristic, silver is out. I have to say that the colour itself looks a lot like some of the dominant silver pics.
Actually some of those silver have light feet: why? Susanne says above that the feet and beak should be dark or black.

Ah well, I guess we will never know

Ok, eyes are definitely NOT bright red. Shouldn't cinnamon have brownish/red eyes too?

About the ghost pearling, in Frank's case it must mean something because 3 out of four babies were pearls. Unless he is a split pearl who doesn't show it in any other way.

I'm not an expert on DS but I know that not all of them have dark feet and beaks. Their feather color can get lighter over time, and this might be true of feet and beaks also.

When it comes to ghost pearling, I suspect that birds with heavier ghost pearling are more likely to be split pearl than birds with less ghost pearling. The spot gene seems to work somewhat similar to pearling, and based on my flock I would say that ghost pearling is also a sign of the spot gene. Squeebis was a well-marked spot gene baby who now has ghost pearls, even though he never had any spot gene markings on his back and wings. There might be other factors that can cause ghost pearling too. I consider it to be a sign that there might be a pearl split, not a guaranteed indicator.