Has my budgie been a male all along?

[Ichigotchi]

Hi guys!

Hope you can help me with this one, please!

I currently have two budgies a male and female (at least so I thought), that I bought in August 2010 when they were still juveniles. The first one I bought, Pitto, I could tell was a male from the beginning. Two days later he needed a friend so I went back to the petshop and bought one of his sisters, Biscuit Crumbs. She had a brown cere, so I was sure she was female, end of story.

Only that winter she developed scaly face on her beak and her cere. Her cere went from typically adult-female-brown to mottled blue and pink as the mites ate away at her face. When I took her to the vet, I referred to her as a "she" and "female" and he never disputed that. On her second dose of ivermectin, I asked if her cere would grow back, and he said oh yes she'll get an adult cere when she reaches adulthood. I told him she had one before, but he didn't seem that interested. It never did grow back and her cere is still blue and pink and not all that healthy-looking. It never occured to me that she was anything other than female, I assumed the change in colour was permanent damage from the mites.

So last week I was just curious what variety my budgies were. I had trouble finding out exactly what type Biscuit was, but decided she must be a double factor dominant pied as she has an iris ring. Only then I saw pictures of male ceres of this budgie-type and realised they looked a lot like Biscuit's. Now Biscuit is not like any female budgie I've had before. She is chatty and really sociable, very dominating over her brother (she is physically bigger), regularly feeds him, and when she was going through budgie adolescence, she frequently tried to mount him, much to my horror. She is definitely more active and sociable than any female budgie I've had before, and has also bonded with me unlike my previous girls, but I just put this down to her just having an outgoing personality.

Here are some photos. The picture quality isn't up to much on her juvenile photos as I only had a crummy DSi camera at the time and also they don't like staying still.

So what do you think? Have I got a male and female, or two males?

Thanks in advance!

[Marianne Marlow]

Welcome,

This is a weird one, I have never seen a juvenile bird with a brown cere before. It could have been a hormone problem.

I'll wait to see what others think.

The later pics certainly look like a male.

[starlingqueen]

Looks like a hen tome. Doesn't look like it had scaly face mite either, just a hen in breeding condition.

[skysmum]

It would seem that she/he is a recessive pied and they are always a bit hard to sex i had trouble with Bumble when he arrived he looked just like your juvenile picks with a brown cere, it also changed as he matured and it was confirmed for me through some members of the Budgerigar Society that he was indeed a male. It still changes in some lights now but i know for sure he is very much alllll male these days

[Ichigotchi]

Thanks, guys! Oh dear, it seems I am no closer to knowing! I was considering a DNA test, but that requires a blood sample or plucking out live feathers, and I'm not willing to do that to my Biccie.

starlingqueen : She had mites of some kind as she was diagnosed by a vet. Her beak was eaten into, she had lots of crusty ridges and "honeycomb" appearance on her beak and cere, and she also had a crusty growth on her lower mandible and another smaller one on her upper mandible near her cere and had lost feathers around that area. I just found the email I sent. I took her to the vet in Feb 2011. The scaly photo I posted was from November 2010. I can't remember exactly when I realised she had mites. I think probably January 2011. I tried treating it with scaly lotion at first and it didn't work, so I took her to the vet. It seems I have no photos of her when the infestation was worst though. So it seems her cere turned white before the infestation even got bad, since you can hardly notice the beak damage in that photo! Now I'm even more confused why she lost the brown cere! Or why *he* (?) had it in the first place?
Here is a higher res pic:



skysmum : I thought that too, but I think she must be a DF dominant pied, as she has an iris ring! You can see it here:




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