As a pet budgie’s owner, you need to identify its sex firstly if you want to pair it with an opposite sex. The most simple and common way to identify a budgie’s sex is to observe its nose cere’s color. But budgies at different age have different colors.

A budgie’s sex difference with color difference on their ceres

An adult budgie who has pure white or dark blue or purple cere is surely a male, and an adult budgie who has a brown or giner yellow cere is surely a female. But the young budgie may be a little hard to indentify the sex for its cere’s color is not that pure/obvious , generally when the young budgie’s cere is while / pink and has a white cycle around the nostril should be a female, otherwise it’s a male.

The hard case is the cere appears white mainly with light blue at lower area, it’s often white around the nostril and then you judge it’s a female, but one or two months later, the blue on its cere may become darker, and then your judgement has to change. Actually it’s a male budgie, its “white” cere become blue because it grow up. And you can see the budgie often do head bobbing that looks like vomiting, this is a male parrot’s sexual behavior. So we can judge a budgie’s sex not only on its cere’s color, but also on its behaviors when he grow up to be an adult bird. Now let’s come back to the point: the cere appears white but with ligh blue at bottom is more possible a female actually, but you still need to wait one or two months to see its color changing and also put attention on its behaviors.

The below is more about the cere’s color at different situation to judge a budgie’s sex.

The adult female budgerigars in estrus.

The adult female budgerigars in estrus.

The adult male budgerigars in estrus.

The adult male-budgerigars in estrus

The adult female budgerigars who are still not in estrus.

The adult female budgerigars who are still not in estrus.

The adult male budgerigars who are not in estrus yet

The adult male budgerigars who are not in estrus yet.

The young male budgerigars who are not adult yet.

The young male budgerigars who are not adult yet.

The young female budgerigars who are not adult yet. The ceres are white or white with the lower area are light blue, the area around the nostril is surely white. Please be noted that the budgies with ceres are basically white but the lower area are light blue, such budgies may need one or two more months to observe, see if the cere will turn into blue or dark blue to be male actually.

The young female budgerigars who are not adult yet.

Hummingbird Hawk-moth is a moth that looks very much like a hummingbird in flying and appearance. In many areas that are not the inhabits of hummingbirds, many people met hummingbird hawk-moths surprisingly and misjudged them as hummingbirds. Some of them took photos on the moths and posted on some forums with a very confirmed claim that they met a real hummingbird even others told him it’s actually a moth.

The differences between hawk-moths and hummingbirds:

• The moths are usually 1-2 inches in body length, much smaller than hummingbirds who are mostly 3-4 inches in length. Some birders may regard hummingbird moths as baby hummingbirds, but baby hummingbirds do not fly.
• The moths have two antennas while birds don’t have.
• The moths’s wings are transparent while birds’ wings are solid with feathers.
• The birds have a needle-like long beak, the tongue stretch out of the beak into the flowers to get the nectar. The moths don’t have a beak but a long tongue, the tongue is curled up when the moth is not taking nectar.

Hummingbirds live only in america, but hummingbird hawk-moth are reported widely in Europe, Asia and America. Hummingbird moths are rare in North America, there are 4 species of hummingbird moths reported in North America. For people who are interested in these tiny wonders, if you notice in your backyard or garden some flying creatures look like hummingbirds but in half size of hummingbirds, they are very possible hummingbird hawk-moths. And you may meet them again in the same place the same time of next day.

Below are some photos for the lovely creatures: hummingbird hawk-moths.

Peeling beak of a parrot is a common sign, it’s natural and normal for most beak peeling cases.

A parrot’s beak serves not only in eating, but also as a “hand” in climbing on the cage or tree branches. Like our nails, birds’ peaks are made of keratin and keep growing all the life time of the birds. There is always the new beak tissue growth under the existing beak and cause the old outer of the beak is being sloughed off, this is the most common reason we see the flaky beak of a parrot. Actually you may see a parrot hurry the process of outer beak peeling by rubbing its beak against hard surfaces.

Sometimes a poor diet will cause problems to birds’ beaks. Vitamin A deficiency and/or Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) deficiency may result in beak malformations and/or beak peeling. This is a problem that can easily be remedied by offering a variety of fresh foods and high quality multi-vitamins/minerals supplements.

A good tip is to provide a piece of cuttlebone to your pet parrot for its beak grinding, this will not only for the parrot ‘s intake of calcium, but also help to prevent the beak from overgrowing.

For the symptoms like broken beak with large pieces peeling off or serious deformed beak, the parrot owners are supposed to ask help from a vet immediately.

If you want a pair of cockatiels to give birth to baby cockatiels, you need to put a male cockatiel and a female cockatel together.

There are two simple and direct ways to distinguish the sex: observe the dotting marks on the feathers and touch feel the distance of two bones around the cloaca (the ass hole).

Observe the dotting marks on the feather under the wings.

The dotting markings on the feathers can help to tell the sex. But it’s different for a adult bird and a young bird that just grew up from a baby bird.

For a adult cockatiel:

Female cockatiels have dotting marks on the feathers under its wings, while male cockatiels don’t have such dotting marks.

For a young cockatiel.

When a baby cockatiel just has feathers, no matter it’s male or female, the feathers under wings have dotting marks. But the male cockatiel has no dotting marks on the new feathers.

Judge by touching the distance between two bones around the cloaca.

The distance is as large as a peanut between two bones around the cloaca for the female cockatiel, while it’s as small as a rice between two bones around the cloaca for the male cockatiel.

Stress bars are usually seen on the wings and tails of birds as thin, horizontal lines that go across the feather shaft. They can be caused by environmental factors, poor nutritional factors, medical issues or mental issues that are affecting the birds’ hormones during the time the feather is growing.  So these stress bars actually reflect the bird’s healthy condition at the time of the feathers’ growth. Keep your eyes on the show up of the stress bars will help you take better care of your pet birds.

The additional vein marks on the feathers are called stress bars because they are caused by stressful events during the growth of the feathers.

• Poor nutrition or diet change
• Reduction or addition of a new family member
• The cage is too small or not clean to make the bird uncomfortable
• Medical illness
• Mental disorder – Depression

If the bars are at the end of the feathers and the other part of the feathers appear healthy, or new feathers have no stress bars, then the cause(s) of the stress have probably been eliminated.

If feathers contain multiple stress bars, or new feathers still have stress bars, that mean the stressful event(s) are ongoing and we should pay more attention to find out if there are bad things happened to our birds and take steps to eliminate the cause(s) that are affecting the bird’s health.

Pet birds will also suffer depression. Most cases of depressed pet birds were found on parrots because parrots are high intelligent and extremely emotional among birds, also parrots are the most popular pet birds that people raise. People won’t sense a wild bird depressed.

What will a parrot do when it’s depressed?

• The depressed parrots will pluck their feathers. This is the most easily recognizable sign that a bird is depressed when it doesn’t have a pal and you just ignore him recently.
• The parrot bob his head up and down all a day.
• The parrot presents an appetite loss.
• Stress bars show up on the feathers.

Fully check your parrot and make certain that there isn’t a medical issue in play with the above symptoms, then you pet bird may be very possible to get depressed.

Why does a parrot get depressed?

Most of the depressed bird cases indicate that a parrot get depressed mainly because of being lonely. A parrot is put alone in a place without a pal or the bird owner doesn’t play with him often, then it may get depressed. In addition, the poor living environment will also cause the depression of a parrot.

How to cure a parrot’s depression?

We need to handle the parrot in three aspects: Medicine, psycho therapy and living environment。

• The medicine most for curing the depression of a parrot is called Clomicalm. This is an animal version of Prozac. Usually we feed the parrot a twice-daily dose, and the dose should be according to the instruction strictly for over-dose will be poisonous to your pet birds
• The owner should play with the parrot more often and better to buy it another parrot as a pal. It’s a good idea to provide your parrot with some new and interesting toys.  These are not only to cure the parrot’s depression, but also a prevention.
• Check if your parrot’s cage and living area are clean and comfortable with enough space. Many cases show the bird’s depression can be caused by an uncomfortable living environment.

The below is a case about a depressed parrot

The parrot gets depressed to bit off its feathers because his companion has gone.

The owner is comforting the depressed parrot.

The owner even has a pet dog to be with the lonely parrot.

The parrot dislike the dog and the owner decide to buy another parrot to be its new companion.

Bird watching is basically a simple job that you can just start your watching with a binocular. But if you want to enjoy more fun in watching birds, you need to prepare more skills and tools for the bird watching trip.

Field guide

You need a book of field guide to birds that help you to know what types of birds you can watch and identify the birds you are watching. If you have some guys to be a team to watch birds, you can consider to hire a local field guide who can help to find the birds in a short time.

A Binocular or a spotting scope

It depends on the distance of the birds you are watching. If not too far away, a light portable binocular is capable and easy to carry with. If the birds are 100 meters or further away from you, or actually you want a more detailed observation, you may need a spotting scope that delivers much larger magnification to you.

Dressing outdoor and not in a bright color

Bird watching is an outdoor activity, so you should dress like an hiker. But don’t dress in too bright that would scare the wild birds away. Especially avoid dressing in bright white as white is a color that indicates danger to most of wildlife.

Whistling can attract some songbirds

Whistling by exhaling through your rounded lips does attract some songbirds to come close to you. But sounding too loudly or many people whistle at the same time to make actual noise will scare the birds off.

A notebook or a digital camera mounted on your telescope to record what you are observing

As a professional bird watcher, you need a notebook to make notes on its appearance and behavior.

• What is it doing?
• What size, shape and color is it?
• Does it have wing bars, an eye line, a long tail, and any other prominent mark?

You can also mount a digital camera or your cellphone camera to the Binocular or the spotting scope via an adapter, watch and record the birds at the same time with photos/videos. Then make notes in your computer with these photos/videos.