HOW TO SEX BABY BUDGIES (PARAKEETS)

Photo of baby budgies.
(Photo by Alan Browne.)

Some people will tell you that you can't tell the sex of a baby
parakeet, but they are mistaken.  I learned the method below from
people who breed budgies to show.  It only works on regularly
colored birds, not on albinos or lutinos (birds with red eyes). 
I don't know how to sex those. 

First, make sure you have a baby.  Young parakeets have black bars
on their foreheads all the way down to their beak; older birds have
a clear, unbarred forehead.  Young parakeets have eyes entirely
black; most (not all) older birds have white irises.

Not all parakeets sold in pet stores are babies - often there are
adults mixed in.

Now look closely at the cere (the fleshy skin over the beak, where
the nostrils are).

MALE baby parakeets have TRANSLUCENT PINK ceres, that look a bit
like a sore thumb.  The cere may have a bluish or purplish tint.
FEMALE baby parakeets have OPAQUE WHITE covering most of the cere,
especially around the nostrils.  It often has a light blue tint.

Notice that in babies, the blue color is not helpful - it does not
mean you have a male.  What matters is whether the skin is
translucent or opaque.  

There is a lot of individual variation in this.  However, females
normally have the opaque whiteness covering MOST of the cere, with
the area surrounding the nostrils being an especially solid white. 
Males may have some opacity around the nostrils too, but it's not
as intensely white as on females, and it doesn't cover such a large
area of the cere.  

Another clue is that males are much more vocal than females, even
as babies.  They chatter and sing on and on!

It will help you learn to sex them if you examine a big group of
birds at a pet store and try to figure out each bird's sex.  At
first, when I did this, most of the birds always looked female to
me.  After a while, though, it got easier to tell them apart.  In
some it's more obvious what their sex is than in others.

SEXING ADULT PARAKEETS

In adult MALES, the cere is BLUE all over.
In adult FEMALES, the cere VARIES.  Females grow an ugly brown
crusty skin on the cere when they are ready to breed.  Later this
falls or peels off, and the cere returns to its underlying color,
which can be white, beige, or bluish.  If you look at the color of
the rest of the bird, it can help explain the color of the cere. 
Look at the toes and beak.  Some birds have pink toes and bright
yellow beaks.  Others are much bluer, with greyish-blue toes and
dark greyish-green beaks.  These birds may have a bluer cere, too. 
Thus, a non-breeding female with a bluish cere is not necessarily
sick or undergoing a sex change.

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If you have photographs of baby budgies you would like to have posted here
as examples, kindly email me.  

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