About budgerigars

Sexing budgies | Colours
Dominant varieties | Recessive varieties | Sex linked varieties
All of the above mixed together

Mind you that I'm no expert in genetics.
The colours and varieties described are what I know of.
If you know some more and which category they belong to
or find that I got something totally wrong then please send me feedback.

The budgerigar's scientific name is Melopsittacus undulatus. They originally come from Australia where they live in big nomadic flocks, flying great distances in their search for food and water.

The wild budgerigar's bodycolour is light green with a yellow mask (face and forehead) surrounded by six evenly placed black throat spots, three on each side. They also have a pair of violet cheek patches. The wingmarkings are black/yellow, looking like waves. The beak is beige in colour and their feet are dark blue. The two longest tail feathers (in the middle) are dark blue. Today you can find budgies in several different colours; light green, dark green, olive green, cobalt blue, sky blue, mauve, and a lot of varieties such as recessive pieds, dominant pieds, opalines, yellow faces, spangle, grey just to name a few of them. This is what has made the budgerigar so popular as a pets.

When explaining the colours and genetics below when ever I'm calling a budgerigar a Normal I'm talking about a bird that has black wingmarkings with a body colour of either one of the green colours or one of the blue colours, and the bird doesn't carry any other variety (no pied, lutino, cinnamon, spangle etc.)!

Sexing budgies

Sexing mature budgies is easy. The cock's cere (the waxy skin around their nostrils) is blue in colour. But if the cock is an albino, lutino, recessive pied or a fallow then the cock will never get a blue cere, the cere is then fleshy pinkish in colour. I didn't know this before and thought that my first recessive pied cock was a hen because he didn't have a blue cere, and never got one either. The cere of an adult hen is whitish, tan or brown in colour.

Sexing young budgies isn't that easy in the beginning. However if you breed with sex linked varieties then you can sex the young already in the nest. This is the case if you're breeding a cock of a sex linked variety with a normal hen. Read more about this in the section about sex linked varieties below.

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Colours

What colours can you expect on the chicks when the parents have different colours? Here I will try to show you what to expect from such pairings.

The following matings are among normals with no other variety involved, such as opaline, cinnamon, grey, pied etc., and the bird is not split to any other colour. Green colours are dominant to blue colours. In this case the sex of the budgerigar has nothing to do with what colour it has.

When I write / between two colours, it means that the bird is split to another colour. Split means that the bird is carrying that colour but it isn't visible. So Light green/Blue means that the bird is visually Light green in colour but carries Blue invisible. I've split up the below tables in two just to prevent scrolling.

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Dominant varieties

The dominant varieties are: dominant pieds, spangles, greys, violets, and yellow faces.

Dominant varieties can never be carried invisible, if a bird carries a dominant variety it is always visible. A double factor bird has got the same dominant variety from both of the parents, while a single factor bird got one dominant variety from either the cock or the hen. In the below table you can see what to expect when breeding with dominant varieties.

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Recessive varieties

The recessive varieties are: recessive pieds, english fallows (eyes without an iris ring), german fallows (eyes with an iris ring), greywings, and clearwings.

Recessive varieties can be carried invisible by the bird. It is only visible if the bird has got the same variety from both the cock and the hen. When a bird carries a recessive variety invisible you call the bird split, for example recessive pied, and I've written it as Normal/Recessive in the below table.

Breeding recessive to recessive is not recommended, okay all the birds will be recessive but they'll drop in size quickly if you continue breeding like this. If mating normal/recessive to normal/recessive or normal to normal/recessive you cannot see any difference between the normals and normal/recessive offspring, and you'll have to test mate them with a recessive to see if they are true normals or normals split to recessive. The best mating when breeding with recessives is to mate a recessive to a normal/recessive, mind you that this is my personal opinion.

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Sex linked varieties

The sex linked varieties are: lutino, albino, opalines, opaline cinnamons, and cinnamons.

In birds the hen has two different chromosomes, one X and one Y, and the cock has two X chromosomes, so opposite that for humans. The sex linked varitety is carried in the X chromosome and therefore a hen can never be split to a sex linked variety. A cock can be split to a sex linked variety because it has two X chromosomes and it needs to carry that sex linked variety on both of his X chromosomes to be visible.

In the example below I've used a lutino bird, however if you got another sex linked variety, then just change the lutino to that one instead.

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All of the above mixed together

There are birds that have several varieties mixed together in the same bird shown and/or hidden. Example: yellow face opaline cinnamon skyblue split recessive pied. I'm not going to write anything about these sort of bird's expected pairing results because it would be too much work for me, and all the different possible combinations are just too many to handle. But I wanted to include it here so that you do know that it's quite possible for a bird to have several varieties mixed together.

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