Educational Budgie Pix, Page Five

These next pictures show how budgies mate. The green bird is the male; the mauve bird (blue with two dark factors) is the female. First, the male stands on the female's back. Of course, this takes a lot of good balance. If the female is not in the mood, she will not stand still for him. Notice how this female has hunched over forward to make her back flat for him.

Next, the male wraps his tail around the female's body. The male's tail is the one pointing down; the female's tail is more horizontal. The male is trying to get his vent area in contact with the female's vent area.

The male puts one wing around the female. This is something that budgies do during mating, and other birds don't. It helps to stablize the male, and it looks like a caring gesture. At this point in the mating, the male is vigorously rubbing his vent area against the female's.

Often during mating, the two birds will make face contact like this. Sometimes the male regurgitates and feeds the female during mating. Other times, it seems to be just face-to-face contact that the birds want. It certainly looks like a caring gesture. Remember, all this activity is taking place while the male is standing on a bird's back, keeping his balance!

Males do frequently fall off during mating; they will mount a female several times during a mating session. The cycle of mounting, rubbing, falling off, and re-mounting, can go on for twenty minutes or more. Sometimes the pair takes time out to fly around in between attempts.

A mating pair of budgies always seems to attract curious onlookers. Not only does the poor male have to worry about keeping his balance; he also has to deal with intruders!

The onlookers always feel the need to disturb the mating pair. This is not a rival male who has disturbed them, but a young female. The male will drive her off and continue.

Now let's get back to the different types of budgie colors and patterns. The budgie on the left in this picture is a spangle. Spangles have a different sort of patterning to their wing markings. Whereas the wing markings on a normal budgie are mostly black and edged with white, the markings on a spangle are just tipped in black.

The black feather tips almost have an arrow-like appearance to them. This is characteristic of the spangle pattern.

Looking closely at the bird on the right, you can see that he is a dominant pied: there is a very wide band of white across his breast.

Here is another spangled budgie. It looks as if someone drew her wing markings on with a very fine pen. This budgie has a tufted forehead.