Colours & Mutations (1)

Erlend told me he is curious about all the colours that a budgie can have, so I looked it up for him :)

There are not only colouration mutations, but also budgies with different kinds of striping patterns, and extremely rare variations. I'll summarize them in a few posts. This is the first one:


Colouration mutations

• The wild budgerigar

The original wild budgerigar is yellow-based with a blue feather structure in the body feathers (the feathers located at the breast and belly area). This results in the classic green colouration of the wild budgie (yellow and blue makes green). The striping pattern on the head and wings are also of the normal type.

• Base Colour

All budgies are categorized into one of two basic varieties: yellow-base or white-base.

A yellow-based budgie results in the classic green variety (the wild bugerigar) and a white-based budgie results in the common blue variety (picture on the left). You can see the base colours in the mask feathers (area above beak and ceres and also to the left and right of the beak) and between the black stripes of the head and the wings.

• Dark Factor

All budgies have a level of "dark factor", going from no dark factor to two dark factors.
Dark factor basically is the same as the level of darkness in the blue feather structure in the body feathers. Wild budgies have no dark factor, so they are light green. One dark factor in a green (yellow-based) budgie results in a dark green colour.

This budgie has dark factor 1, unlike his ancestors from the wild

Two dark factors in a green budgie result in the "olive variety" '(see picture below)


The same goes for white-based budgies:















Left: Blue budgie with no dark factor = Sky Blue Budgie.
Middle: Blue budgie with one dark factor = Cobalt Budgie.
Right: Blue budgie with two dark factors: Mauve Budgie.

That is a lot of colours and information... and it's only the beginning! For more details, go to http://www.budgieplace.com/colorsguide.html