Thought I'd share how Alex's appearance has changed over the time I've had her, because honestly I just noticed how different she looks now.

Here she is from day one, back when she was still a baby:

And here's what she looks like now:


For those who don't remember, Alex had been plucked by her bird parents as a chick, hence the bald spots on her wings in the first picture. Took quite a while but they've filled in quite nicely.

Wow, how time flies. Anyone remember when I thought she was male and kept calling her a "he"?
But frankly, I'm kind of glad that she's female, because I'm quite a fan of her pearl pattern.

It's also interesting to see how much she has evolved from "pear" to "actual bird-shaped bird".

Very unusual colour and patterning of her....
Stunning bird

She is probably one of the prettiest cockatiels I've ever seen! Thank you for sharing

That's an amazing change. She clearly much healthier in the second photo. And, she is holding herself in a manner that suggests self confidence, again, in the second photo.

Is she a cinnamon pearl? Her pearls have wonderful detail to them, even though there is less contrast than there would be on a normal gray, pearl (which I think is what Silver is--although he is losing his pearls since he's a big boy now. Wouldn't it be interesting if they were mated. Not that that is in the cards or anything, just to imagine what the babies would look like. Oh, Silver also has yellow cheek patches. I think Alex is a white face, isn't she?

She's a fallow pearl, actually. Very similar in color, but the main difference between cinnamon and fallow is the eye color. Fallow tiels have red eyes where as the cinnamon tiels seem to have brown eyes (at least, they look brown to me).

Also fallow appears to typically be lighter than the cinnamon mutation, even.

In some cases Alex is very confident, and in some cases she's quite skittish as well. She's a bit more prone to panic flights than Lucy is, but she's been getting better about it as her flight ability also improves.

And yeah, she's a whiteface too. Very pretty, in my opinion. She definitely looks more like a bird now, rather than a feathered pear.

I still remember when she couldn't stand correctly. It's a stage that baby birds seem to typically go through when they're getting their feathers and starting to learn how to perch, or hold themselves upright when they walk. On a flat surface they just have the tendency to spread their legs out.

She'd also drag her tail too, and the tail feathers would always get stained because she dragged them through her own poop.
She has improved since then of course, as she matured and learned how to properly stand.
She had trouble climbing the cage bars back then too. Couldn't quite grasp the fact that she could use her beak to help her, and so she'd flap her wings as she climbed up the side of the cage. She's still a little weird about climbing sometimes, because sometimes she'd only use her feet, without the help of her beak or wings.
Either way, she climbs all over the place now. She likes to hang upside down on the ceiling of the cage, and also hang from her bird toys. She's quite the goof.

How times change... (She was always a goof though. )

Fallow is typically more brown-looking than cinnamon, and it's frequently paler too (but not always). During the normal melanin production process, the melanin starts out brown and is converted to black. Both cinnamon and fallow prevent this conversion so the melanin stays brown instead of changing to black. But the way they do it is different and so the visual results are somewhat different.