Cockatiel Morphs
Color: Something to consider
Cockatiels come in a wide variety of colors and patterns. Breeders do not keep every morph available; it would be impractical. I prefer pieds and whiteface morphs. I have created this page to help new cockatiel owners, breeders, potential breeders, and fanciers so that you can get a basic idea of the morphs most easily found on the market.
Understand that some color morphs are Sex Link, some change color when they reach sexual maturity, and some can be visually sexed and some cannot- but they are All cockatiels. To learn more about genetics please use the links below:
The Cockatiel Genetic Calculator (for determining chick colors)
Cockatiel Genetic and Color Wikipedia
American Cockatiel Society Color and Genetics
Or just do a google search and look up cockatiel color morphs and genetics-but the point is that if you do not understand the morphs and want to know more, educate yourself!
Basic Colors: Normal Grey
Normal grey cockatiels
This is a pair of normal, aka wild type, cockatiels. The female has a darker face compared to the male. This is a dominant trait and all normal grey chicks start out looking female. After 6-9 months the chicks molt and males will develop the bright yellow face.
Normal grey female (hen)
Again, this is a normal grey hen. no bright yellow face. This hen is over a year old. If you want to know the sex of a normal baby before its molt, it needs to be DNA sexed. Normal grey hens can carry the genes for Whiteface (WF) and some of the non-sex linked genes. They Cannot carry the genes for the sex link morphs such as lutino, pearl, and cinnamon.
Normal grey male (cock)
This is male normal grey cock. As you can see he has a bright yellow face, no other patterns. He can carry the genes for WF, cinnamon, Pearl, Lutino and all others. They start out life looking like a female. They molt between 6-9 months and will then show the bright yellow face.
White Face
White Face Cockatiels
Whiteface is similar to grey except there are no bright reds or yellows. This morph does not develop red cheek patches or yellow faces, they lack the gene to produce these pigments. This gene is also recessive, meaning both parents need to carry or express the WF gene to produce WF offspring.
They can come in different morphs and can be combined right cinnamon, emerald, pearl, pied, and so on.
The bird to the left is a white face male.
Whiteface hen
Whiteface morphs, similar to greys, start out life all looking like females and then males develop their white faces around 6 to 9 months of age. The females retain a darker color on their faces but may have small amounts of lighter grey or white near their beaks and where red cheek patches would be found on the grey cockatiels.
WF chicks
One interesting thing about all WF chicks is that they hatch out with White down. Greys and other morphs hatch out with Yellow down. This photo shows 2 normal whiteface chicks and one whiteface lutino chick, how can I tell? The WF lutino is born with red eyes and the non-lutino chicks have darker black eyes.
Lutino
the lutino
Let me first say that this is NOT an albino. Lutino is a recessive and a sex link gene. What does that mean? it means that breeding them gets weird. For example, if you breed a male lutino or a male who carries the lutino gene to a non-lutino hen, all resulting lutino offspring are female. But if you breed a male who carries the lutino gene to a female lutino, you can get both male and female lutino offspring. Fun right? Use the link to the genetic calculator up top to play around with possible pairing and chick outcomes.
Anyways going back to Lutinos, these birds hatch out with pink/red eyes and their eyes will darken with age. You should NEVER breed lutino to lutino, this is because of the "lutino bald spot". The gene that produced this color will also cause a bald spot on the back of the birds head, some breeders have been able to reduce or even eliminate this problem in their lines. But most pet quality lutinos still have it and sadly a lot of uneducated people breed lutino to lutino and so this problem will never go away.
White face lutino
Remember when I said this is NOT an albino? This is why people mistakenly call them albino: the whiteface lutino. These babies are born with white down and red eyes. They have NO pigment on their bodies at birth. Some adult whiteface lutinos will develop an almost cinnamon wash to their bodies with age, but not all bloodlines. The same rules apply, do not breed these birds to other visual lutinos. Males and females look alike. You can only sex these birds by DNA sexing, surgical sexing, waiting till it lays an egg or doesn't, or by behavior.
Remember: not an albino
This is a good shot of 2 juvenile lutinos showing their red eye color. these girls were just under 2 months of age. The one in the front is a normal lutino and the one in the back is a whiteface lutino.
Cinnamons
cinnamon hen
The bird to the left is a female cinnamon whiteface. Cinnamon is similar to lutino in that it is sex-linked and recessive. So go back up and read about that under the lutino section and go play around with it on the genetic calculator website!
Cinnamon is a fun gene to play around with and birds can be darker or lighting depending on how much sunlight they get-no joke! Chicks are also born with ruby or red eyes, but their eyes get darker than an adult lutino as they grow up.
Cinnamon can be mixed with other morphs
This handsome older gentleman is a cinnamon pied. He is not mixed with lutino as he has been test bred to prove he carries it but does not express this trait. He is a good example of how cinnamon can get washed out. Cinnamons can be visually sexed once they are adults, unless mixed with a morph that doesn't allow for visual sexing, such as pied.
comparison
In the front, we have a baby cinnamon pearl and a normal grey in the back. These were siblings, just to show you the color difference.
pearl cockatiels
pearl is a pattern
Pearl can come in just about any color. The hen to the left is a cinnamon pearl. As you can see, she has lovely scalping patterns on her body. Things to remember:
Pearl is a recessive and sex-linked gene similar to the lutino gene.
Male pearl cockatiels will slowly lose their pearling as they molt into their adult color-some may retain ghost pearls or a few scalps here and there.
Females will retain their pattern for life.
Male Pearls
This male is a great example of a male who has some shadow pearls left. He is a cinnamon pearl male whiteface, but as you can see he has lost his pearl pattern as he became an adult. if you breed a pearl male to a pearl female, the offspring can be any gender.
pieds can be mixed with any morph pretty much
This pretty lady is a whiteface pearl pied. This is just so show that they can come in very interesting combo morphs, making them a super fun morph to play with!
Pieds
Pieds: my favotire morph
A pied cockatiel is a mixture of colors and cannot be visually sexed unless they are also expressing a form of sex link gene (cinnamon, pearl or lutino). They can have a lot of white or a little white. They can have "dirty face" markings or clear faces and/or cheek patches. These birds are a lot of fun to play with, genetically speaking! They can be mixed with pretty much any morph. They can also be so high white that they appear to be a white lutino, the trick to tell them apart is the eye color. An all-white or "clear" pied will have black eyes, a lutino will have red/ruby/or lighter eyes.
This is a recessive trait and there has been a lot of debate on how to tell if a bird carries this trait.
Pied ticks or markers
Do you see how this baby has white spots on the back of its head and crest? Those are often called pied "ticks" or "markers" that suggest the baby carries the gene for pied. Some people would also say this makes the bird a pied. I do not consider this to be a pied, but rather a bird who carries the gene to produce pied offspring.
All the colors!
This is a cinnamon pied that was produced here a few years ago. Just showing off another pied!