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How can you distinguish A male black-cheeked love bird from a female lovebird2007-11-24 17:20:00

I have 2 black-cheeked lovebirds but when I bought them they didn't tell me the genders. Both of my birds look identical: Black head and cheeks, orange collar with a yellow neck and the body is green.

Answers:

You'll find that the female one pecks the male constantly. The male is the one who snaps back occasionally.

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Most birds have to be surgically sexed or sexed by their DNA. Avian vets or some bird/pets stores will do the blood sampling and send it in for you. The only parrots that I know of that are noticably different in looks by gender are the ecletus.

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Up over the beak should be a pad, but I don't know what they call it, but the bigger, darker colored pad is the male.

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When you bought them, they probably didn't know their genders.. lovebirds are the most difficult bird to sex. Both sexes have bright colors. DNA testing can give you a definitive answer

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There are nine species of lovebirds, all originating from Africa. Three species, Abyssinian, Madagascar and Red Faced, are sexually dimorphic, which means you can tell just by looking at the birds if they are male or female. Unfortunately, with the other species you can't. And just because you have a "pair" of lovebirds doesn't necessarily mean you have a true male and female. Same sex pairs will bond, preen, feed each other and mate like a real pair. The non-dimorphic species are the Peachfaced, Masked, Fischers, Black cheeked, Nyasa and Black Collared lovebirds. There is such a wealth of color mutations within each species that hybridizing or mating two different species together is not recommended. It ruins the gene pool for each species and sometimes can produce confused, timid, scared and frankly not very pretty birds when compared to pure lovebirds. There are many debates over whether the resulting off-spring is infertile.