white spots underneath wings

[des68]

My cockatiels just became parents for the first time. The female is about 5 years old, pied. The male is 18 months old, grey split to pied (white marks on head). In the beginning I wondered if he was female, as he has white spots under his wings that never went away after his moults, but DNA testing confirmed male. I never thought any more about it until the babies hatched and pinned. They are about 2-3 weeks old now, and I have what seems to be the following...

1 grey
1 pied
and one mystery baby who is not grey, but who I thought was pied until today I noticed that the pins look striped - grey, yellow, grey, yellow.

So... I wondered if this one might be pearl/pied? One of our birds is a pet store bird, and the other is a rescue bird, so lineage is unknown.

My questions are:

1 - could the spots under the wings of the father indicated pearl?
2 - do the pins being yellow/grey/yellow/grey striped suggest pearl, too?
3 - since I think that the mother would show pearl if she were, I'd assume that the pearl came from dad if it is, in fact, pearl
4 - if the baby is pearl, and it did come from dad, does this confirm that the baby is female?

Wow, I'm trying to figure out this cockatiel genetics thing and it's so interesting and amazing... If anyone out there can help me please do! And thank you!

[des68]

Okay, upon closer inspection - duhhhh - the spots under the father's wings are light yellow. Thanks.

[srtiels]

OK...No the spots under the wings are not an indication of being a pearl. If he was a visual pearl when young the easiest way to verify this is to look at the underside of his tail feathers close to the body...they will have a mottled look like the pix at the end of my posting.

Yes...from your description of the pin feathers it sounds like a pearl, and came from the father not the hen...thus the chick is a female. A pearl baby would have a dark crest, and many times the feet can darken. The tail pinfeathers would also look yellow coming in. If it is also pied the crest and head would be yellow and several of the wing flight feathers would yellow.
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/Mousebirds-and-more/Other%20birds/muta-molted-pearl-tailfeathers-adul.jpg
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/Mousebirds-and-more/Other%20birds/Pied-baby-illus.jpg

[sweetrsue]

Sometime regular pins can have the look of pearled pins. But what you described does sound like Pearled pins. The male can carry the gene without appearing to be a pearl. So if that baby does turn out to be a pearl it is female. I have a few pics of pearls in pinfeathers. One is Cinnamon Pearl and the other is Whiteface Pearl but I'm sure you will get the idea. I put a few day range in ages.

[xxxSpikexxx]

Iam not very good with mutations but the last time Spike got his wings clipped they thought he was a girl :p because he has spots under his wings. It is because he is a pied that he has spots under his wings still.

[srtiels]

Is he under 1 to 1.5 yrs old? He would still have some of his adolesant feathers. Do you have a full body pix of Spike?

[xxxSpikexxx]

Here is Spike
http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc291/xxxSpikexxx/AnimalsApril5th09032.jpg
http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc291/xxxSpikexxx/Spikes2ndbirthday002.jpg
He just turned two :) The spots may be gone now (I have not looked) but I found it funny because after they clipped his wings and he was back in the carrier he started talking and they were amazed that a female could talk :p

[des68]

First, you are all awesome! Thanks so much! The pics of the pearl baby helped a lot, and the input on my male. He is definitely 18 months probably about right on, no younger, and has loads of yellow spots under the wings. I am going to take a pic sometime tomorrow and post it so you can see, because I was always thinking after he was sexed a male that they would fall out but they haven't. He had no pearl markings on his outer feathers when we purchased him. At the time his face was still a bit grey, but the yellow was starting to show in patches, so I put him at between 3-6 months old? That was about 14 1/2 months ago. So I think he should have lost the spots if it had just been adolescent spots but??? I'll snap the baby, too, when "she" wakes up, and the mom while I'm at it, I guess!

Thanks, though - this is THE best place on the net for cockatiel info!

We are super excited at the "cute" little babies we have... cuteness is in the eye of the beholder at this point...

:-)

[srtiels]

xxSpikexxx

Ah your Spike is definitely a pied. A lightly pied...meaning less yellow on the body. I could see that he had a yellow wing flight feather. In being an actual pied it would take several molts before he lost the adolesant spots.

des68...Ah...enjoy those babies...and also post a pix of the parents. Under normal circumstances if your male was only a split to pearl and pied he would have lost most of the spots from the the first couple of molts. If your male has even 1 yellow flight or tail feather it could quite possible be a lightly pied, and that would contribute to irregular shaped spots to the flight feathers.

Note: many grey hens will also lose the spots from the first few flights by the time they are about 2 years old also.

[srtiels]

Here is a collage of Pearls...hens on the left and males (adults) on the right
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http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/Mousebirds-and-more/Other%20birds/20080206_234.jpg

[srtiels]

Since both parents are carrying the pied gene you can later tell by looking at the tail feathers if the pearl baby is also pied, especially if there are no pied on the body or wing flights....
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/Mousebirds-and-more/Other%20birds/Tailfeathers-pearls-pieds.jpg

[des68]

Hi again - here are some pics I just took of the family...

Notes - our "dad" doesn't have many tail feathers at the moment. He came from the pet store over a year ago with a severe wing clip and after a few attempts to fly and banging his tail, the feathers never grew back nicely again... They tend to break, and he lost his last two in a night fright a couple of weeks ago. So... I can't check out the tail bands as suggested.

The pics are:

Mom - pied
pied baby?
grey baby?
dad - with spots visible
pied - and pearl? baby

So.... any further thoughts?

thank you!!!

[srtiels]

Nice shot of Mom feeding the Pearl Pied baby.

#2 is a lightly pied like Mom
#3 is a normal (grey)

Dad still has some of his adolesant spots
And the last pix is definitely a pretty pearl pied

They are nice healthy looking babies :)

Susanne

[des68]

OOOOOhhhhh my daughter is very excited at the pearl/pied surprise we got! Thank you for helping us figure it out!

One last question -

If we bought the dad at between 3-4 months and he had no pearls...

1 - could the pearl gene have come from mom? I will answer this myself with my limited knowledge of cockatiel genetics and say no, because mom would show her pearls??? or could she carry it invisibly?

2 - if I am correct with 1, and it came through dad, I didn't realize he could carry it invisibly? (since he didn't show them when we bought him)

3 - if yes, he can carry the pearl gene invisibly (i.e. split to pearl?) then is the pied/pearl baby a girl for sure?

We are trying to figure it all out, but since it's the first clutch we didn't expect the pearls and are so excited at this nice suprise! Also, the kids want to keep one girl from the 3, so we are hoping to narrow it down to our pied/pearl.

Thanks!

[srtiels]

#3 He would be a Normal split to Pied and Pearl. He would have inherited the gene from either of his parents.

Quite possibly the male chicks will also inherit the pearl split.(and pied)

[tielfan]

If we bought the dad at between 3-4 months and he had no pearls...

1 - could the pearl gene have come from mom? I will answer this myself with my limited knowledge of cockatiel genetics and say no, because mom would show her pearls??? or could she carry it invisibly?

2 - if I am correct with 1, and it came through dad, I didn't realize he could carry it invisibly? (since he didn't show them when we bought him)

3 - if yes, he can carry the pearl gene invisibly (i.e. split to pearl?) then is the pied/pearl baby a girl for sure?

Males can carry pearls invisibly (a split) but females can not. A female needs only one pearl gene to show the color, and she gets that gene from her father only. A male needs two pearl genes to show the color - one from each parent - so you have to have a pearl mother to get a pearl male. If you have a pearl chick and the mother is not pearl, the chick has to be female.

[srtiels]

Yes...both parents must have the pearl gene to get pearl babies of BOTH sexes.

Every once in awhile I have been fooled and have paired what I thought was an adult (molted) pearl with a normal (no splits) hen and have gotton pearl babies of both sexes.

In very rare instances a pearl is still genetically a pearl even if it has only one (1) pearl (even partial) on its back. I have had this occur 3 times.

Below is a pix of a young geneticall pearl male...because he has one pearled feather. In the past I have has 2 hens similarly marked, but their pearled feather was on the shoulder, and only partially pearled, and partially hidden by the surrounding feathers.
------------------------------
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/Mousebirds-and-more/Other%20birds/Normal-1-pearl-illus.jpg