Help me with the sex of my young budgie..

[Nisha]

Hi folks,

I recently got a 2 months old Budgie (See the pic attached). Please help me out with his/her sex. I am sure that some experienced bird owners may help me out with this question. The birdkeeper told me that the bird is 'male', but reading on internet and inspecting different pics its quite confusing to tell the sex. It seems that she is a hen.

Behavior: Quiet, jolly and likes to socialize with me a lot. Bites rarely and hops on my hand as soon as my hands goes inside the cage.

Thanks..
Nisha

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/8483/jollyx.jpg

 

[DallyTsuka]

i'm pretty sure a young hen white rings around the nostrils are usually a key sign at the younger ages.

 

[legal_eagle]

Looks like a female to me as well. A very interesting colored bird!

 

[MonicaMc]

Ditto!

 

[ruffledfeathers]

Yup, reminds me of one of the little girls i used to have (Gretchen).

 

[Nisha]

i'm pretty sure a young hen white rings around the nostrils are usually a key sign at the younger ages.

Thnx Dally,

At what Age the signs would be absolutely clear if she is a hen?

many thanks again

Nish..

 

[MonicaMc]

Six months to one year in age.... but you can often tell before then.

If the cere was pink, we would have said male, but it appears white, so hen.

 

[kenzie]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cere looks blue. Doesn't that mean its a boy?

 

[MonicaMc]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cere looks blue. Doesn't that mean its a boy?

That's like saying pink means girl... only humans have prescribed colors to certain sexes (well, except eclectus where females are red and males are green!)

The truth is, females can have white, white with blue, white with tan, white with blue and tan, tan, brown and crusty brown ceres.

Males will have pink, blue or purple ceres!


Here is an image of a male and female budgie. It's one image that has been cropped and the position of the birds swapped. Female left, male right. If you look closely, both budgies have blue on their ceres! The female however has a white cere with blue.

Here are pictures of just the hens cere in various phases

And the same males cere again

The same hen and male budgies, and a green hen.

And the same hen and male budgies again, with a different green hen

Blue equals male and pink equals female is very misleading! I once told a pet psychic that her female albino budgie was a male and she didn't believe me! She had her "hen" separated from her two male budgies because she didn't want them to breed. All the vets and breeders at the time told her that since "her" cere was a different color than the males, that her albino budgie was female! (who was I then but only a 15 year old little girl?) It didn't click until she attended a meeting about parrot behavior. Some years later, she had to come up to me and tell me I was right! (I say this not to shove it in her face, but to say that even the 'experts' can be wrong!)


To me, the cere looks white, so unless this bird somehow mates with a confirmed female and they produce chicks, I'm sticking with a female budgie!

 

[MikeyTN]

The hens gets the brown crusty cere when they're ready to mate!

 

[Birdlover11]

Female ! She's young, so it's easy to mix up the two genders

 

[Customcasket]

Looks female to me.