Trying to Sex and age my Whiteface Pied Cockatiel - need help

Hello everyone! I am trying to correctly Sex and age my Whiteface Cockatiel. I recently found a picture on the internet that used wing feathers to determine gender on pied cockatiels and it now has me wondering if our cockatiel is not the gender we originally thought. Originally we thought our feather baby was a young male. "he" is going through a Moult right now and some of "his" grey tail, wing and face feathers are now coming in white but others are coming back Barred. "his" beak is still pink but has a line of grey in it which originally told me "he" was young, in addition to me seeing some Barred tail feathers and some white tail feathers. "he" also acts quite young, very curious and very willing to try new things. My Vet agreed that "he" was young but she never confirmed "his" gender (although this may be because we were confident he was a young male). We also have yet to hear him imitate any noises from his surroundings, "he" mainly uses typical Tiel contact calls, there was maybe one or two times he sounded like my Budgie but never heard the call again. I will include some pictures along with this diagram that has left me wondering if I sexed him correctly..

This is the diagram:



And here are some pictures of my Tiel (I can add more if anyone needs other angles), have some bath photos in here since it was a good way to get stills of the wing feathers spread out. Hopefully it's helpful..

Notice the line of grey in the beak, it lines up perfectly with the single grey feather near his ceres.



The grey cheeks are starting to Moult out to white now, I am starting to see specklings of white feathers where there were grey ones before



The right wing is much more Barred then the other side



Left wing has less Barred feathers



Notice some of the tail feathers are white while others are still barred

Well, first of all... wow, what a stunning bird.

Is your vet a Certified Avian Vet? Here's a link you may want to use.
http://www.aav.org/search/custom.asp?id=1803
Regular vets often "wing it" with birds, although some are very dedicated and talented.

I'm afraid I'm not much help on sexing this bird, but we have some real 'tiel experts here, who will probably be along shortly. Be sure to bump your thread to make sure it gets attention.

Good luck!

GaleriaGila said:

Well, first of all... wow, what a stunning bird.

Is your vet a Certified Avian Vet? Here's a link you may want to use.
http://www.aav.org/search/custom.asp?id=1803
Regular vets often "wing it" with birds, although some are very dedicated and talented.

I'm afraid I'm not much help on sexing this bird, but we have some real 'tiel experts here, who will probably be along shortly. Be sure to bump your thread to make sure it gets attention.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Tiny truly is a beautiful bird, and he certainly knows it!

As to your question about my vet, yes she is a certified avian vet, in fact she is the only one for 5hrs in any direction of me. She manages the Wild birds that come into our wild bird rehab as well, she definitely knows her stuff and I definitely trust her judgment. She was very confident he was a young bird but never mentioned if my sexing was correct although she appeared to be very educated on the Whitface breed.

Whoa. Such a beautiful bird!

It's hard to tell what the gender is but I would say maybe female. But I could be wrong. It might be easier to tell once they're a bit older and have gone though a couple of moults.
I would definitely consider taking a trip to a certificated avian vet. I believe a DNA test could de-mystify what gender your wonderful and gorgeous bird is.

Pieds are hard to sex. Why don't you get a DNA test so you can know for sure, they're cheap ($20-$30) and then no more guessing!

Pieds are definitely more difficult to sex, especially if they are younger birds, but I'd say that your Cockatiel is definitely young, but probably at least a year old. With that being said, and assuming it to be true, i'm going to say that your bird is most-likely a female...

Keep in-mind that with a pied, it's best to get a DNA test done to confirm...and important to do so, because if your bird is a female you need to know this for certain so that you can be sure to provide enough Calcium in the daily diet, cuttlebone, mineral block, etc., and be ready for any future egg-laying, as Cockatiels have a nasty habit of continual egg-laying once they start. So it's best to know exactly what their gender is for health reasons alone. You can have your CAV do it, or you can order a feather test-kit from a number of places online, you order the kit, they send it to you, you pluck a few feathers and send them back to them, and in a couple of weeks you have your answer...most online test-kits cost between $20-$30, the CAV depends on your individual vet and their method of testing (If you have your CAV do the DNA test, I would not allow them to draw blood from the neck unless you are also going to have routine, baseline blood-work done as well, which is a very good idea to do once a year anyway; otherwise, you don't want to stress your bird out just for a DNA test, which can be done much more easily by either quickly clipping a toenail, getting the small amount of blood needed for the test, then using a dab of Qwik-Stop on it and you're done, or simply by quickly plucking a few small feathers from the chest area)...

The beak coloration means nothing. I had a female pied that also had that marking. I don't know how old she was, but she was without a doubt an adult!






If young males molt early, they can grow back in barred/spotted feathers. Behavior wise, sounds female, molt possibly male?


But keep in mind pied feathers *DO NOT* have bars or spots on them. Only non-pied feathers. This means the white tail feathers (with white centers) and white flight feathers don't mean anything other than the fact that your cockatiel is a pied!



If you want to use the wing spot method of sexing, then I'd recommend getting some better shots of the flight feathers, specifically the ones directly next to the body. Here's why!

https://www.justcockatiels.net/uploads/2/7/4/9/2749198/1337164_orig.jpg