Budgie Parakeet Colors
What’s What, and Who’s Who!

I can remember a time when every budgie I looked at seemed to be a special, and totally random, mix of colors. However as I learnt more I realised there was a pattern to those beautiful mixes.  With a little bit of effort you too can identify the lovely budgie parakeet colors and varieties that make each of them look unique. And from there you are just a hop, skip and a jump away from being able to breed the specific ones you want! But that’s another story… for another page…

Wild Budgies

Let us start with the ancestor of all our lovely budgies, that wild budgie out on the Australian Outback. Wild budgies usually only come in one colour and one variety, but all our pet budgies colours have come from there.  Click here to find out what color wild budgies are.

Captive Budgies

So, if there are only one colour of budgie in the wild, how did we end up with so many different budgie colors in captivity? Well, in all living things the process of mutation occurs. So if a mutation occurs in the sex cell of a budgie (the cell that is past on during breeding to form the next generation) it can have an effect on the forming of the chick. Now this is likely to cause its death, as many genes are vital exactly as they are, but occasionally you get a mutation that alters something non life threatening, like the color of the feathers. And in captivity we are able to protect these birds and breed more of them, leading to much more variation than you could get in the wild.

Basic Body Colors

The best place to start learning is with the body color of your budgie. By this I mean the colour from its chest down to its vent and around under the wings. I am sure you have noticed that there are many shades of green blue and grey available, so lets start with them.
Once you have explored the body colours you may want to learn more about the many different varieties that budgies come in. The variety of a budgie effects the markings colour and position, and can alter the shade or presence of the basic body colour. This is where the truly amazing diversity of colours and patterns are produced. 

Take a look at the links above and see if you can identify your birds colour and variety.