How Do I Tell if My Bourke Parrot is Male or Female and What Mutation is it?

How do you tell the difference between male and female bourke parakeets?

Here is a photo of my bourke, Nova: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v691/c...
The breeder I bought it from said that it is a rosa bourke, is this true?
Answers:
The only sure way to tell if your bird is a male or a female is by having your Bourke's DNA tested.

A normal Bourke's Parakeet will have a brilliant blue on the front of the wings and on it's rump. They are primarily grey with pink at the bottom of their chest.

A Rosy Bourke's Parakeet will have different variations of pink. Some are a dark pink while others are a light or medium pink.

The Cream Bourke's Parakeet is pale in color and has more "yellowish" feathers.

The Rainbow Rosy Bourke's will have a splattering of pink, grey, yellow, blue and even green on it's body. I have a Rainbow Bourke's and it is primarily pink with iridescent blue, yellow and green on it's rump.

Adult plumage is usually reached around eight or nine months of age. Until then you will not be able to use any guidelines by looking at the feathers.

Male Bourke's are said to have more color than the female and are also larger than the females. A Normal Bourke's will have darker blue feathers above the nares than the female. Also the females are said to have a white wing stripe.

Breeders tell me that males will sing and females will only chirp with they mature. They also tell me that Rosey males have more pink coloring on the head than the females. Again, a DNA test is the only sure way to tell if you have a male or a female Bourke's Parakeet.

One of the reasons it is so difficult to tell the difference between the male and the female Bourke's Parakeet without DNA testing is because you have to have a male and a female to make the comparison. Even then it is difficult because every bird is different.

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the thing to do if you want to know take the bird to the petshop and they'll tell you if its a male or female

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as far as i know only way to tell difference is by blood testing which your vet can do

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Take a picture of your rosie bourkes rump and i can tell ya. seriously! The male has more blue than a female. Sometimes slightly "buff-er"