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Sexing and aging birds.
Older than us?
George Mackenzie Dunnet was a well-known Scottish ornithologist who passed away in 1995, aged 67. The photograph that accompanies his obituary shows a timeworn face, mostly bald head and grey locks clinging to temples. However, his sense of fun survives—literally.
Throughout his life George studied fulmars on Eynhallow in the Orkney Islands.He had his picture taken in 1951 holding a ringed fulmar when he was a young man and, by great coincidence, had it taken again 30 years later with the same bird. Personal vanity was brushed aside in his admiration for the fulmar’s unchanged looks.
Meanwhile, the bird lives on. It is a sobering thought that, when ringed, it was already a mature breeding adult making its true age a mystery.
Unlike humans, birds do not go grey or develop wrinkles. If their outward appearance does not change, how can we tell their age? In most cases ringing provides data on lifespan and longevity. Natural clues to the precise age of a bird are few and only serve to chart survival into adulthood—not beyond. Small birds replace distinctive juvenile plumage with that of an adult within months of being born. After this, their looks do not alter. Larger birds take several years to reach maturity during which time they grow progressively more adult-like feathers. Brown juvenile gannets acquire white plumage resembling their parents’ through a series of moults over a five-year period.
In the zoo.
Safeguarded from predators, disease and other life-threatening factors, birds in captivity can outlive human owners. So far, the record goes to a sulphur-crested cockatoo in London Zoo, which was over 80 years old when it died in 1982. In the real world it is a different story.
In the wild.
In the wild, because of the overriding mortality from shooting, it is difficult to estimate the natural lifespan of ducks and geese. For example, based on ringing recoveries, most shot teal are between one and three years of age. Comparatively few reach ten years or more. The only known change in appearance linked to old age occurs in captive drake wildfowl. For some bizarre reason geriatric males develop female features, a trait never noticed in free populations. 16 years old is the record for a swallow.
By and large, the smaller the bird the more eggs it lays and broods it raises in an attempt to reproduce itself. After all, each breeding pair has only to replace itself with another during its lifetime to ensure that the species survives. High reproductive rates insure against heavy losses.
Sadly, mortality can be enormous among first generations. Adult robins reach three, four or five years of age (exceptionally up to 12) but about 75% of juveniles die during their first winter. Those that make it through to their first birthday can look forward to a drop in annual mortality rate—but only to 60%. Life is cheap for small songbirds. Even so, some have made it to the ripe old age of 15 for great tits, 16 for swallows and 20 for starlings and blackbirds.
Long distance migration.
Strange to say, the rigours of long distance migration do not seem to unduly shorten life expectancy. An arctic tern has reached 34 years of age and a ringed common tern is currently in its mid-thirties and still going strong.
Seabirds are particularly long-lived, yet many species do not begin breeding until they are several years old and lay only single-egg clutches. They have few natural enemies, which partly explains their relatively high reproductive success. Care of offspring is a further significant factor. Young shearwaters are reared in burrows and leave the nest chamber under the cover of darkness.
Most adult auks accompany young at sea for several months and continue supplemental feeding. Juvenile auks are assimilated into auk society, which provides a range of life-prolonging benefits such as communal fishing and flock navigation to feeding grounds and safe nesting sites. Little wonder, therefore, that with an annual survival rate among adults of 90 per cent, many auks are long-lived. Razorbills, guillemots and puffins have all reached more than 20 years of age.
Of course, since proof of age relies upon the chance recovery of a ringed bird, examples of longevity in seabirds are probably far from true upper limits. Current records are 46 for a royal albatross and 44 for a manx shearwater. In both cases the birds were ringed as adults and are still alive.
Instead of relying on luck to provide statistics, data based on large numbers of marked adults monitored at breeding colonies over successive years provides all sorts of interesting information, including annual mortality rates. From this, life expectation can be estimated.
Species with around a three per cent annual mortality have a further expectation of life of about 30 years, and approximately 5 per 1000 could theoretically reach more than 80 years of age. If a low mortality rate signifies long life then skuas, albatrosses and fulmars come out on top. George Dunnet would approve of the fact that adult fulmars may have the lowest annual mortality of all birds, at a mere two or three per cent.
Life at sea.
How then, do seabirds die? They are supremely adapted to life on the oceans but evolution has not prepared them for the contribution of man to their world. Introduced predators take eggs and young at colonies, drowning in fishing nets kills all age classes including breeding adults and contamination of the seas by oil and other pollutants has eradicated seabirds in great numbers.
What about natural casualties? The commonest causes of death are starvation and bad weather, often in concert. Another fatal hazard may come as a surprise: landing accidents. The long wings of gannets, shearwaters and albatrosses are built for gliding, not for touching down. In busy colonies collisions are not infrequent and at large gannetries dozens of adults kill themselves every year in mishaps during landing and take-off. Maybe, due to old age, they need glasses?
How old are you? Bob? Jane?
How can you tell the age of a budgerigar or the sex of a cockatiel? With some species of birds it is relatively easy to tell a bird’s sex and age based solely on appearance, while with others there is no way to visually judge the sex or age.
The following tips to visually sex and age some of the common caged birds.
How can you tell the age of a budgerigar or the sex of a cockatiel? With some species of birds it is relatively easy to tell a bird’s sex and age based solely on appearance, while with others there is no way to visually judge the sex or age. The following tips we use to visually sex and age some of the common caged birds at Pretty Birds as well as answering our customers questions about estimating a bird’s sex and age.
Interpret color codes.
The zebra finch is the most popular finch kept and bred in captivity. On normal grey adult birds, the male has a red bill, orange cheek patches, black band on the chest, and chestnut colored sides. The female has an orange bill, while the rest of her is solid light grey. In white zebra finches, the male and female are solid white, but the bill is still red in the males and orange in the females. And like canaries, only the male zebra finch sings.
This is true in all the finch species, but a male will normally only sing with females present (although some canaries will sing long after females are absent). Young zebra finches have orange bills and have a more puff-like look about them. If they are very young, under three months, they will also have some black on the bill, and very young birds’ bills are entirely black.
Budgerigars are probably easiest to sex when they reach maturity at six to seven months old. The cere, which is the waxy skin around the nostrils above the beak, will either turn blue for a male, or tan or brown for a female. In babies, the cere is pinkish-purple, but looking at enough of them will give an idea of whether it will be male or female. The cere will have a more bluish hue for baby males and appear more white in females, although this is not always the case.
Also observing young parakeets and looking for the ones that seem more talkative could also provide clues as to the males, but until the cere changes color, it is merely a guessing game. Very young parakeets, five to seven weeks of age, will have dark brown to black at the tip of their bill.
Parakeets under five to six months will have the stripes on their head go all the way to the cere, while in adults the forehead is a solid white or a yellow color. But if the budgie is an albino or lutino, it will not have any stripes at all, but the cere color will give an indication of age on these birds.
Cockatiels can be sexed easily. Normal grey mates have an orange cheek patch while the females do not, and the adult males have a yellow face. Some of the different colors like cinnamon, silver and even lutino males will have an orange hue in the cheeks. If the bird is a solid color, the tail feathers can be observed through light to tell the sex of the bird.
In young birds, the tail has stripes in it which will stay if it is female or will become solid colored if it is a male, usually around the first molt at six months of age. If the bird does any whistle-type of singing, then it is probably male. The female will offer some single notes but will not usually sing. Some breeders pull one tail feather on a very young bird, and by looking for the stripes of the one that replaces it, can tell if it is male or female. Very young cockatiels have shorter crests and a very sweet look about them with large eyes and a puff-ball appearance.
Harder to decode.
Lovebirds and conures, are almost impossible to sex. Aging them is also difficult, but if they are very young, some species will show dark coloring in the bill that in a mature bird is a solid light color, and they may not have full adult coloring. Many conures also have paler coloring when they are very young. Some breeders of lovebirds can sex them by feeling the hip bones for size and spacing.
However, it is impossible to tell the sex of most of the commonly kept lovebirds by appearance alone. In fact, what appears to be a pair, with mating going on between the two birds and going into the nest, can be two males or two females. And the females will lay eggs as well, confusing the issue even more. If the true sex is needed, then a blood sample to look at the DNA will give exact identification in both conures and lovebirds.
Lastly, the larger parrots can be extremely difficult to age or sex, except in obvious cases such as Eclectus parrots where the male is green and the female is red. Some cockatoos can be sexed by color differences between the sexes, such as in the black cockatoos or the gang-gang cockatoo. Eye color may be dark brown in males and reddish in females of the pink-breasted, Major Mitchell’s, and sulfur-crested cockatoo species.
But in Amazons and macaws it is best to do a DNA test to be sure of the sex of the bird. If an Amazon bird is very large and robust, it is probably female as males tend to be smaller and sleeker looking. But to do this type of sexing, which is truly just guessing, there must be a number of birds to look at to compare sizes.
Determining age also depends on the species of bird. A yellow-naped Amazon will not have yellow in the back of its head at less than six months old and normally takes over a year to get its full coloring. Most young parrots have darker eyes and generally paler coloring than the adults will have. And most of the larger parrots do not reach sexual maturity till four to five years old so behavior of the bird may be a key to its age.
This is a simple overview. Only practice can help to distinguish age and sex of an individual bird.
You never knows when a green singing finch will be offered, and the most important question is whether it is a male and therefore sings, or female. How can a green singing finch be sexed? Hint: only the females wear jewelry in these finches.
Sources: bbc.co.uk and prettybirds.net
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Maureen Adams
October 9th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Very interesting info. Sometimes is very important to know how old the bird is. Specially if you have to buy one and you dream the bird learns to speak. :)))
November 1st, 2007 at 9:35 pm
This was a very interesting article. I knew there were ways to have a bird sexed, but I was never sure how this was done, short of a trip to the vet.
I did know that birds have an extremely long lifespan if taken care of properly. I read somewhere that depending on the period of your life you get a bird, you might just end up sending it to your kids in your Last Will and Testiment.
I believe that part of the care we give our birds is in the way we house them. A proper that allows your bird plenty of room to move about as well as climb and play. To small of a cage and you will run the risk of boring your bird to death, much like spending 8 to 10 hours a day in a cubicle.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge on various birds.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:36 pm
This was a very interesting article. I knew there were ways to have a bird sexed, but I was never sure how this was done, short of a trip to the vet.
I did know that birds have an extremely long lifespan if taken care of properly. I read somewhere that depending on the period of your life you get a bird, you might just end up sending it to your kids in your Last Will and Testiment.
I believe that part of the care we give our birds is in the way we house them. A proper bird cage that allows your bird plenty of room to move about as well as climb and play. To small of a cage and you will run the risk of boring your bird to death, much like spending 8 to 10 hours a day in a cubicle.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge on various birds.