Cockatiels: One Or Two? Male Or Female?
If you are looking for a single cockatiel, you don't need to worry about the bird's sex. Young males and females adjust equally well to life with people. Whether one person or a family they become tame, try to whistle or talk, and develop their own idiosyncracies. However, if you hope for off-spring from your birds, you should get the advice of an experienced breeder or pet dealer to be sure that the second bird you select is the proper sexual counterpart of the first one.
Sexing young cockatiels is something only an experienced breeder or dealer can do with any degree of certainty. Before the post-juvenile molt, the orange cheek patch of the male is no brighter than that of the female, and the characteristic markings on the under tail-coverts of the female haven't shown up. I know several cockatiels with names like Chico, Mike, oTony whose owners found an egg in the cage after a couple of years, evidence that the supposed male was in fact a female.
Sexing adult cockatiels, that is, birds that have passed through their post-juvenile molt at about nine months, presents no difficulty. The plumage gives a clear indication of a bird's sex. The contrasting colors are paler in the female than in the male. The cheek spot and the mask, that is, the facial areas that stand out from the gray ground color, look in the female, as though they had been dusted with a brownish powder. The female also has yellow and black crossbanding on the under tail-coverts, and there is some yellowish white on the rims of the outer tail feathers, which are all gray in the male.
One Bird or a Pair?
Most people want just one cockatiel, on the assumption that a single bird will be friendlier and will more readily learn to whistle or even talk. What they don't think about is that a single, caged cockatiel will be happy only if a human is willing to make up for the lack of avian company by being around a lot of the time and paying plenty of attention to the bird.
For me, the ideal solution is always to get a pair. Start out, however, with one bird. Once the youngster has learned to trust you, you can get it a companion. Because the first bird has learned to enjoy whistling, talking, and playing all sorts of tricks, it will not lose interest in these activities. The new bird will initially concentrate all its attention on the other bird and will regard the human members of the household with timid suspicion rather than affection. But it will learn quickly from its model, the other cockatiel,just how "useful" these humans can be.
It doesn't matter, by the way, whether or not the two birds belong to opposite sexes—unless you hope for offspring from them. If two male or two female cockatiels are kept together, one of them automatically assumes the role of the absent sex. A relationship between such a couple is disrupted only if a third cockatiel appears on the scene. Keeping three birds is always an ordeal for one of them and should be avoided.
The Colors of the Plumage
The Australian ancestors of our cage-bred cockatiels are of a delicate gray color that sometimes has bluish or brownish tinge. The upper tail-coverts are silver gray; the lower tail-coverts, blackish gray. White feathers on the outer secondaries form a striking band on the wings. Throat, cheeks, and forehead are a bright lemon yellow, against which the deep orange feathers in the ear region show up clearly, forming the so-called cheek patch below the black eyes.
The feathers of the crest rise from the yellow forehead. The shorter ones forming the front of the crest are yellow; the longer back ones are gray like the crown but have some pale yellow barbs intermingled with the gray. The crest of a cockatiel is considerably more slender than that of a cockatoo. A fine line of gray feathers runs from the brownish gray cere above the strong, gray beak toward the eyes, cutting across the mask between the bright yellow forehead and the more delicately colored lower half of the face, which becomes white farther down.
Color variants created through selective breeding includes many choices now other then the standard colors
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