Hello, we just got our new baby jewel last sat. Ever since we brought her home she has been itching alot with her foot and her beak. Little fluffy white feathers always fall out. Whats funny she seems to shake and itch more so when on my shoulder. When should this be something to worry about? She is 3 months old or so. Read it can be molting but everything I read on net says no molt till 1 year.

What kind of bird is she, and can you post a picture? It'll be easier to spot potential problems if we can see her.

It's probably normal though. It's natural for birds to do a lot of scratching and preening, and also normal to have some debris during the process, although a lot of falling feathers indicates a molt. Molt times have a lot of individual variation; some birds do it earlier than the official first molt time and others do it later. Indoor climate conditions are very different from living in the wild and this can change the molting pattern. It's also possible that the seller was wrong about the bird's age, this is pretty common.

Yes what kind of bird can help lol sorry. She/he is a cockatiel. Here is some pics.

The bird looks healthy enough to me so it's probably just a molt. This bird has some interesting mutations. The red eyes say fallow or maybe recessive silver, and the face coloring looks like pastelface or maybe yellow cheek. These are all rare mutations!

Ok cool, glad to hear that. The breeder told me it was something like 3 names lol forgot but thats awesome its rare=) One more question, do they learn to climb up cage and sleep on perch when they grow up? He pretty much stays on bottom and sleeps in his food cup every night, only tucks his foot and turns head on my shoulder or trys to=) Thanks so much for info. Glad I chose this forum

You might want to check back with the breeder to find out what the mutations are, and post them here so we can see whether we agree. The pictures are kind of overexposed so it's possible that the coloring is more ordinary and I'm being fooled by the lighting. Sometimes breeders don't know the mutations very well and tell people the wrong thing, but someone who's breeding rare mutations is likely to know what they're talking about.

If you ever decide to breed your bird, knowing the mutations will help you select a mate with the right genes to produce babies who are visual for the mutation. Every mutation has specific inheritance rules and you can't pair a bird with any random cockatiel and be sure of getting babies that look like the parents.

Most cockatiels like to sleep on the highest perch in the cage but there are some who like to sleep in other places, and 'in the food dish' is a popular place for that. She might change her habits when she gets older and she might not.

Dominant silver yellow cheek pied. Pastel pied shorter name. =)

Pied is common. Silver and yellow cheek are rare, so your bird is kind of special.

Pastelface is a different mutation than yellow cheek - the results are sort of similar but completely different genes are involved. To make it even more interesting, there are two different yellow cheek mutations caused by different genes - dominant (DYC) and sex-linked recessive (SLYC). If you think you ever might want to breed the bird, it's best to nail down exactly what kind of face color mutation your bird has. Right now we're looking at three different possibilities.

There are also two different silver mutations caused by two different genes - dominant silver and recessive silver. Does the bird really have red eyes or was that just the camera flash making the eyes look red? A recessive silver bird has red eyes and a dominant silver bird doesn't.

Is it confusing enough yet? Cockatiel genetics is complicated and it's a big enough job just trying to understand the basic common mutations. The rare mutations add some extra complexity. But you have a wonderful bird with some rare mutations, and if you'd like to learn more about what that means I can keep on throwing complicated ideas at you lol. But for right now we can't be completely sure about which exact mutations your bird has.

Those cheeks are incredible! I would love to have a tiel with yellow or pastel cheeks, they are so elegant.

Is it true that the silver mutation is found mainly in Australia?