. Quick Budgie Gender

Determining a Young Budgie's Gender
Covered in this Page: Baby Budgie Ceres, Pieds, Albinos, & Lutinos, and Sexing by Behavior

First of all, in order to sex a budgie you have to know what the word "cere" refers to. A budgie's cere is the fleshy area on top of his/her beak where the nostrils (or nares) are located. Generally, a male budgie will have a bright blue cere and a female will have some shade of pink, white, tan or brown. However, there are a few exceptions to the rule and baby budgies are much harder to sex than adults.
Almost all the baby budgies that I've seen have had pinkish-purple ceres. This means that you can't go by the rule "males have blue ceres and females have pinkish, whiteish, tannish or brown ceres." Well, sometimes that works but more often than not, the babies you see are going to have pinkish purpley ceres. (See the "Juvenile or Adult" section of this page if you're unsure of whether or not you have a young budgie.)

The first thing to look for are budgies with white rings around their nostrils. The rings won't be very obvious, but if you look closely you may see them. A young budgie with white rings around its nostrils is most likely a female. To me, this is probably the most helpful thing to know but as all methods go, it's not foolproof. (The only foolproof method is to have an avian vet DNA sex your birds but obviously that won't work if you haven't bought them yet.)



Here are more examples of baby budgie ceres:
 (The color in pictures may differ depending on the monitor you are using but hopefully they will give you an idea of what to look for.)

This is a baby female budgie. You can see that even though her cere is pinkish in color, she has distinct white rings around each nostril.

















This is a baby male budgie. You can see a very slight bit of light color around his nostrils but they aren't white like the female budgie mentioned above.















This is another baby male budgie. He is about six weeks old and already has a bit of blue to his cere. The rings around his nostrils are more light blue and transparent, not white.










From left to right, there are two females and a male. The two females have lighter ceres with white around the nostrils. The male's cere is a bit more even in color and while he has rings they aren't as distinctly white as the other two.
















Other than looking for white rings, it can help to know the basic rules of sexing a mature budgie. That way you can at least try to spot hints that a cere is going to change to a certain color.

The rule that I mentioned above (males have blue ceres and females have pinkish, tannish, whiteish or brown ceres) applies to normal colored budgies (and dominant pieds but you'll learn about those later). Normals are budgies that have the same patterning that they would in the wild:

This is the coloring that budgies have in the wild and is the "normal" coloring. The body is a solid green with no splotches of other colors and it has a yellow face mask. The tail is deep blue in color. This budgie's cere is blue so he is a male.








This is also a normal colored budgie. He's blue, but the pattern of his colors is still that of a normal budgie. His body is solid with no splotches of white and he has a white face mask instead of yellow. Normals can come in many shades of blue or green but they won't have splotches as pieds do. This budgie has a blue cere so he's a male.










Pieds, Albinos, and Lutinos:

Pied budgies are ones that, instead of sporting a solid color, have splotches of colors here and there. (In green birds the splotches will usually be yellow and in blue birds the splotches will usually be white.) Some will have really obvious splotches on their body whereas others may just have a few spots here and there.

These budgies are dominant pied and both have the characteristic spot of color on the back of the head. In green series birds the spot is yellow. In blue series birds, it is white. Dominant pied males develop bright blue ceres just like normals. As adults, dominant pieds also develop iris rings.








These are the same two dominant pied birds. You can see that the one on the right also has a band of color across the stomach. This is another characteristic that is commonly present in dominant pieds.These birds are very young and so they haven't developed iris rings. An iris ring is the best way to know for sure whether you have a dominant pied or a recessive pied. Dominant pieds get their iris rings around 12 months of age.








An adult budgie's iris ring.









Pixel and Piper (the two on the left) are both recessive pieds. Recessive pieds usually have smaller spots of color (many have much smaller ones than Piper and Pixel have) and they make things a little complicated. They (along with albinos and lutinos) are in the group of budgies in which the males end up with pink ceres rather than blue. Females still get tannish, whiteish, pinkish or brown ceres. A true recessive pied does not develop an iris ring but because all babies are without one, that's not very helpful at first. (Most won't get the iris ring until around 12 months of age.)










This is an albino. It's completely white with red eyes and is female as the cere is brown. (The eyes appear darker in this photo but they are, in fact, red.) Male albinos develop pink ceres rather than blue.











This is a lutino budgie. Lutinos are almost completely yellow with red eyes and usually have white cheek patches. Often they will also have light-colored flight feathers (the longer feathers on the wings). The budgie shown here is young but looks to be female as she has a light cere with white rings around her nares/nostrils. Male lutinos develop pink ceres rather than blue.










Keep in mind that cere color can change according to breeding condition in females. If your bird's cere ever becomes crusty and brown, you've got a female. When out of breeding condition, a female's cere can look light blue as pictured here:

An adult budgie with a very light blue cere is a female.
This budgie just finished raising a clutch and is out of breeding condition.


When in breeding condition, the female budgie's cere becomes a deep brown color.




Sexing by behavior:
If you get completely stumped you can use behavior as a last resort. Some things to watch out for if you're looking for male budgies are the ones attempting to feed other budgies. Males are usually more vocal and their noises will be more like warbling rather than the simple, monotonous chirp that females often use when vocalizing. Males may also do a lot of head bobbing.

Females are more likely to be the pushy ones, chasing another bird out of her "spot" and being generally bossy.

None of this is a sure-fire way to sex a budgie and unless they've been DNA tested it's really just a guessing game. In my experience, both make great companions and I think that as long as you take precautions against breeding, that won't be a problem even if you end up with a male and female. Don't add a nesting box (or anything that resembles one) and you will most likely not have to deal with breeding budgies. On that note, don't assume that adding a nest box and a pair of birds is a good way to breed. It's not, but I'll have more on that later. :)