Thursday, March 08, 2007
Is That A Normal Green?
By Blake Ma
Blake enjoys working with lovebirds and has a passion for exhibiting and breeding them
Click image to enlarge
A normal green peach-faced lovebird. |
An American cinnamon violet peach-faced lovebird. |
In the current clutch of babies that I’ve been hand-feeding, I have produced an American cinnamon violet. I will be keeping the American cinnamon violet for exhibiting and show training. This baby is actually Serenade’s sister. Can you tell the difference between a normal green peach-faced lovebird and an American cinnamon peach-faced lovebird? To those who don’t know the difference, both can look very similar.
At first glance, the baby looks like a normal green. But if you take a look at the flight feathers, you can see that they are a cinnamon color versus the green, dark colored flights of a normal green bird. The feet of an American cinnamon are also lighter in color versus the darker feet of a normal green. The body color of an American cinnamon is a lighter shade of green than the normal green bird as well. Also, other mutations, such as violet, affect the whole body versus violet on a normal green bird, which causes less of an effect on the overall body color but only on the rump. The American cinnamon baby, pictured, also has one violet factor, which has slightly darkened the whole color of the baby bird.
Click image to enlarge
The normal green peach-face is on the left, and the American cinnamon peach-face is on the right. |
The normal green peach-faced lovebird's darker beak on the left, and the American cinnamon peach-faced lovebird on the right. |
On a normal green bird, and quite a few of the other mutations, the beak coloring is black and, as the baby gets older, the black coloring slowly recedes to its normal beak color. You can see in the picture that the American cinnamon bird has a much lighter colored beak, and this is not because the beak color has recessed already. These two babies are exactly the same age.
Part of what I find exciting about lovebirds is their numerous mutations and the combining of these mutations to produce beautiful birds. Serenade is a white-faced violet opaline American cinnamon. If you removed the white-faced mutation, as well as the opaline mutation, then Serenade would look like her sister, an American cinnamon violet.
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Is That A Normal Green?
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