Budgie Anatomy & Lifecycle

Anatomy

The majority of the body parts labelled here are common to all bird species. The features that make this very clearly a budgerigar rather than any other type of bird are the cheek patch and throat spots. Not all varieties of pet budgies have these, due to the complexities of the bird's colourful gene pool; but all wild budgies have them, and they are an important part of the bird's body language. Budgies' keen vision is able to pick up the ultraviolet light reflected from the cheek patches. They might just look like blue or green splodges to us, but they are as striking as a firework display to a budgie's sensitive eyes.

Lifecycle

In the wild, budgerigars usually breed in response to rainfall, although they will seize the opportunity to breed whenever it crops up. With water and food in abundance, the birds can take time out from their nomadic lifestyle and settle down. If water and food supply allows, budgies will go with the flow and produce several broods one after the other. Budgerigar nests are an object lesson in simplicity – a bare tree cavity with enough space to fit one adult and between five and eight white, circular eggs. Sometimes a fence post substitutes for a tree, and occasionally a log on the ground is chosen. It’s the female alone who sits on the clutch, with the male providing the duties of an eager-to-please waiter, bringing food for his partner. He regurgitates a porridge of leaves and seeds for her to feast on, and continues to bring food throughout the weaning period.

A wild budgie's nest in a eucalyptus tree

After 17-19 days, the eggs hatch, one at a time over a one-week period. Budgies are born naked, blind and helpless, like all parrots (and many other birds too). The first meal they receive is a liquid from the hen’s crop, sometimes referred to as budgie milk. This contains essential nutrients and antibodies, the avian equivalent of mammals’ milk. Nature has even equipped the hen to vary the contents and consistency of this fluid as she feeds her brood in the first week, from youngest to eldest, ensuring that each age group gets exactly the nutrients it needs. From dawn until dusk the cock bird flies back and forth, filling his crop with seeds and regurgitating them for his mate, who then delivers the best of the crop to the chicks. The male begins to feed his offspring directly after about three weeks (although sometimes an over-protective female won’t allow this, and goes it alone for the entire fledging). There are always birds of different sizes in the nest, as the hen staggers her egg-laying. Unlike in many species, where the later chicks are a kind of insurance policy, to be discarded if the first-born thrive, the survival chances of the younger budgies are very good. Once they are hatched, the hen instinctively feeds them first rather than the pushy elder members of the brood. In captivity these later eggs are sometimes removed and given to a surrogate broody pair to hatch.

Three-week-old budgie chick

Budgie chicks can hold up their heads after seven days, and their eyes open after ten. They grow soft down to help them keep warm at this point, with a covering of ‘pin feathers’ appearing at two weeks. These are thin, scaly stubs that will later blossom, flower-like, into beautiful budgerigar feathers. This happens between three and four weeks, and the birds are weaned and ready to leave the nest between 30 and 40 days after hatching. It’s a full nine months before they’re completely independent. At a year old, budgies are ready to breed, and the cycle begins again. As with any bird species which has both parents investing a considerable chunk of time in the rearing of young, a budgerigar couple are strongly bonded, with a ritual romance involving all manner of mutual grooming, beak ‘kissing’ and head bobbing.