Sexing Parrotlets.

A great thing about Parrotlets is that they are sexually dimorphic, meaning that the colour or size of the male or female differs. So you can tell by looking at them whether they are male or female.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia

Sexual dimorphism is the systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species. Examples include size, color, and the presence or absence of parts of the body used in courtship displays or fights, such as ornamental feathers, horns, antlers or tusks.

Dimorphism comes from two Greek words, di meaning two and morph meaning form. Thus, sexual dimorphism basically refers to two forms of sex, male and female.

Thus, sexual dimorphism basically refers to two forms of sex, male and female

This is a real bonus to people who keep or are interested in keeping Parrotlets, as you will be able to tell the sex of your parrot as soon as you get it. This is also a great help to breeders as they will be able to tell customers what sexes they have, as soon as the babies have started to feather.

So let's have a look at the major differences between the male and female Parrotlets. There are three ways to sex your Parrotlet, two of them easy and one not so easy. We will start with the not so reliable (for the amateur) that is, by looking at the face of the Parrotlet and checking their mask or flash of blue that they have above their eye.

In the picture of Squeak you can see where the arrow is pointing just above his eye to the blue mask,with Squeak this is quite distinctive and shows a real blue colour.But in the picture of Pesto you can see that the mask is not so distinctive, there is not a lot of difference between his face mask and Boo's, in the picture next to him.In the last picture we have Torres a female green as you can see her under wings are all green. So without checking the colour of the wings or rump it would be hard to make a proper decision on his sex.

Squeak

Pesto

Boo

Torres

So what's the most reliable way of sexing a Parrotlet then? Well the best and most reliable way is by checking the colour on the top of the wings on your Parrotlet. If you hold your Parrotlet in your hand and spread the wing out, you will be able to tell the instant you see the top of the wing.

This is Pesto,(owned by Andy and Laura) as you can see his wing is spread out and there's the blue on the wing, also note the colour of his rump it's a bright cobalt blue (depending on the mutation this colour can be different, but it's always more distinctive in the male than the female)

Pesto

This is Boo (owned by Andy and Laura) with her wing spread out, note the total lack of blue on the top of the wing, this says that Boo is a female. Also look at the rump and take note of the colour of that, a sort of iridescent green totally different that Pesto's

Boo

This way of sexing is the same in the blue mutation, here is Cricket (owned by Gardengail), again you can see the blue along the edge of his wings, and also by the colour of his rump. Cricket also has a fairly distinctive blue mask

Cricket

This is Lulu (owned by mugwump) as you can see there is a lack of blue on the top of her wings and rump, meaning Lulu is a girl. Also note the lack of face mask on Lulu.

Lulu

This way of sexing Parrotlets is the same for nearly all the different mutations, mostly the difference in colour will be blue on the wings and rump, this only changes in the lutinos where the colour change is white and they have a very distinctive yellow face mask, and in the albinos there is no difference so they are the only Parrotlet that have to be dna sexed.