How to Determine if a Budgerigar (Parakeet) is Male or Female
Whether you're trying to breed your parakeets, or just to come up with an appropriate name, it's convenient to know if your feathered pet is a male or a female. Mature parakeets have a few distinctive physical traits that separate the boys from the girls. Younger parakeets are a bit more challenging to identify by gender using physical differences, but paying attention to some specific behavioral traits can help out in those cases.
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Instructions
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Identify your parakeet's cere, which is the fleshy part above its beak. The cere of a mature male parakeet is generally bright blue or violet and smooth, while the cere of a mature female parakeet is most often brown and slightly scaly.
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Note the color of your parakeet's feet and legs. Like the cere, the legs of mature male parakeets tend to be blue, while the legs of mature female parakeets are often brown.
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Observe the size and coloration of your parakeets. Healthy male parakeets are larger and more brightly colored than female parakeets.
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Listen for song differences between your parakeets. Female parakeets sing less and do not have as varied a song as males.
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Tips & Warnings
Before they're a year old, young female parakeets tend to have pale blue ceres, while the ceres of young males are generally pink or light purple. The differences, however, may be subtle.
Male parakeets often engage in mating-dance behavior, which includes head bobbing as they move back and forth across their perches.
Any parakeet that lays eggs is a female. However, not all female parakeets lay eggs, due to age, stress, illness or other factors.
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