Here's a few I took earlier today. Notice how piper's color is changing from a sky blue when I got her to almost teal now. Is it normal for their color to change like that?


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Nice photos! Based on cere color I'd say she's a girl. Feathers are basically inert material like our hair, and existing feathers don't change color except for things like fading in the sunlight and other environmental factors. But new feathers that grow out can show some color differences from the older feathers. Changes in diet can result in brighter or duller colors, with diet improvements causing brighter colors. Changes in health can cause color changes too. With cockatiels there are some mutations that can get lighter or darker over time; there might be some budgie mutations that do this too, but I don't know the details.

Id say a girl.. not really sure.

She is definitely a hen!

Great! I'm almost positive Amarillo is male. Now just gotta wait till they're old enough, they're already attatched at the wing lol.

They are so pretty! That yellow is so bright, I don't think I have seen a budgie in that colour in any shop around here. Maybe English budgies don't have that colour mutation?

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The lutino mutation is possible in English budgies but I don't know how common it is 'over there'. American budgies and English budgies are all the same species so it's easy to breed them together and get the same mutations in both varieties. But imports and exports of birds are very restricted so it's not always easy to get a bird with the color you want in the place you want it to be.

I've seen tons of English yellow lutino budgies in California. They are very common in America.

The store I bought him from does have English budgies. The first one I ever bought like 10 yrs ago was an English. It's very possible that Amarillo is bred from English. And yes he is beautiful, you should see him in the sunlight. It seriously looks like he's almost emanating a yellow vapor like he's glowing of something. I'm still not sure if he's a male though. All the physical signs point to male but his personality is more like a hen. He's very vocal and pushy. But then he starts dancing with Piper and trying to feed her. It's weird but i'm going to go the DNA route and know for sure.

Feeding another bird is male courtship behavior. With budgies, the female incubates the eggs and the male feeds her while she's on the job. Courtship feeding is his way of showing her that he can handle his side of the job.

I've heard that a lot of budgies are mixed American and English style. The American-style birds are much closer to the original wild bird, and they're generally healthier and have a longer life than English budgies. Selective breeding for unnatural traits tends to introduce some undesirable side effects and that has happened with English budgies. But I've heard that they have gentler personalities than American budgies.