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Clearwings - Wings, Tails & Cheek Patches


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okay seeing as there has been some discussion around heavily marked clearwings v's poorly marked greywings I thought it might be useful for others to see the variation that can occur just amoungst clearwings - as I don't breed greywings I can't put up a comparison but it's probably still interesting to see the variation just in clearwings.

 

Now the Australian standard for clearwings goes like this:

 

Mask: The mask is to be clear, wide and deep, (not cleft) extending beyond two large cheek patches.

General Body Colour: Back, rump, breast, flanks and underparts to be a solid even shade throughout.

Markings: Clear ground colour is optimum. Faint markings are found on cheeks, back of head and neck. Wings are to be of pure ground colour.

Eyes: Black with a white iris ring.

Primary Flights: Approaching ground colour.

Body Colour: Approaching full intensity.

Feet & Legs: Blue/Grey

 

Colour Cheek Patch Tail Quill Tail Feather

Light Green Violet Neutral Neutral with ground or body colour suffusion

Dark Green " " "

Olive " " "

Grey Green Grey " "

Sky Blue Violet " "

Cobalt " " "

Mauve " " "

Violet " " "

Grey Grey " "

 

 

 

Now in reality lets have a look at some of the clearwings floating around my aviary........

 

These guys are pretty close in standard to the colours of tail, wings etc as required by the standard.

clearwings12-1-10011.jpg

 

You can see here the neutral (white-ish colour) of the tail quill. Remember too that this is an olive so the double dark factor will also add more colour to the tail. Considering this, this fellow is a good example of a clearwing in variety but like so many birds like this he is reasonably small. Still managed an 11th at the 2008 Nats.

clearwings12-1-10012.jpg

 

Again with this little guy. He also managed an 11th at the Nats but this year. He also shows a nice neutral tail quill but his wings are a touch more marked than the fellow above.

clearwings12-1-10008.jpg

 

clearwings12-1-10009.jpg

 

okay so what about this girl. Looking at her wings, there is no way you could mistake her for a greywing but oh-oh her tail quill is grey................

clearwings12-1-10003.jpg

 

Now this fellow is your classic badly marked clearwing. One of those ones that at some shows you might be told he's a greywing and some shows you might be told he's a clearwing - oh sooooo confusing. He has a strong grey tail, and heavy grey wing markings. But when you truely compare him to a proper greywing, his markings are less defined, more fuzzy and not as grey. BUT he is HUGE. Outcrossing clearwings to normals to get size tends to alter the wing modifiers and you get more heavily marked birds.

clearwings12-1-10001.jpg

 

This guy too. Again he has a darker tail that standard and the tail quill is grey, but he is from a clearwinged clearwing to a normal split giving you the heavy markings again. He too shows the hazy wing marking compared to a greywing.

clearwings12-1-10017.jpg

 

So now lets look at cheek patches. Yes there is a standard but you MUST remember that there is natural variation in every animal, plant and human - same with budgies. Also remember that the dark and violet factors will make the cheek patch look different.

 

Dark Green.

clearwings12-1-10016.jpg

 

Light Green.

clearwings12-1-10019.jpg

 

Violet (no defined iris ring here - full clearwing to clearwing breeding, no recessives in the line, 18 months old but no defined iris ring - it's there just very dark).

clearwings12-1-10022.jpg

 

Violet (you can see the throat spots too are not super well defined).

clearwings12-1-10023.jpg

 

 

One other thing too. At a show I judged recently there were 3 greywings benched. 2 had clearly defined lovely strong mid grey markings and the 3rd looked much like my heavily marked violet above. The 3rd one was probably a badly marked clearwing but when you look at the standard it fitted the greywing standard reasonably well. So how to deal with this situation as a judge. Knowing that it "probably" was a clearwing but not being 100% sure, I was compelled to judge it in the class it was entered. I could do nothing more than place it 3rd as compared to the other 2 birds but here in lies the complication. When I approached the exhibitor, they had previously benched the bird as a clearwing and had been told it was a greywing. Not until you had a good comparison against a couple of nicely marked greywings could you make a good assessment of the bird........... I understand how confusing it must be for people trying to get into this tricky variety.

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Interesting post, a problem that didn't exist prior to importation, why?, because in Australia we kept our clearwings pure, never mating them to greywings or cinnamonwings. And our judjes, judged for variety, not just size, shape and colour. I can remember clearwings being wrong classed because their feet were not grey enough hence they were suspected of being cinnamon clearwings. Unfortunately our fellow fanciers oversees were not so variety concsious and when you compare the Aust clearwing to the imported clearwing, they are like two seperate mutations.

Having judged for over 30 years myself I can only recommend you judge solely on appearance, judge each bird before you on what "standard" it meets , you cannot be expecvted to know the breeding. My opinion is that we will soon return to judging Variety as there are so many good birds being benched, the way to split them is to return to Variety.

Cheers Clearwing

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Excellent topic !!! Many thanks for this :(

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Interesting post, a problem that didn't exist prior to importation, why?, because in Australia we kept our clearwings pure, never mating them to greywings or cinnamonwings. And our judjes, judged for variety, not just size, shape and colour. I can remember clearwings being wrong classed because their feet were not grey enough hence they were suspected of being cinnamon clearwings. Unfortunately our fellow fanciers oversees were not so variety concsious and when you compare the Aust clearwing to the imported clearwing, they are like two seperate mutations.

Having judged for over 30 years myself I can only recommend you judge solely on appearance, judge each bird before you on what "standard" it meets , you cannot be expecvted to know the breeding. My opinion is that we will soon return to judging Variety as there are so many good birds being benched, the way to split them is to return to Variety.

Cheers Clearwing

 

 

Thanks Clearwing!

 

That's all I could do really - judge on appearance - as the bird did fit the greywing standard reasonably well. Had it been then only greywing benched with nothing else to compare it too I probably wouldn't have questioned it as much either.

 

It would be nice wouldn't it if you could breed this very beautiful variety for it's variety not for meeting the current size and feather standard. It's one of the varieties that suffers so badly when you try and up the size, then the features that attracted people in the first place - namely the strong body colour contrasted with the beautiful clear wings - are lost...... seems somewhat backwards to me.

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I do agree.. the thing that strikes me is these Half/half birds are either bad clearwings or bad greywings either way they are BAD. Clearwing

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Great topic keep it flowing :P It's a learning point as I am considering breeding clearwings and maybe greywings aren't clearwing, Well I mean with clearwings help :(

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Interesting post, a problem that didn't exist prior to importation, why?, because in Australia we kept our clearwings pure, never mating them to greywings or cinnamonwings. And our judjes, judged for variety, not just size, shape and colour. I can remember clearwings being wrong classed because their feet were not grey enough hence they were suspected of being cinnamon clearwings. Unfortunately our fellow fanciers oversees were not so variety concsious and when you compare the Aust clearwing to the imported clearwing, they are like two seperate mutations.

Having judged for over 30 years myself I can only recommend you judge solely on appearance, judge each bird before you on what "standard" it meets , you cannot be expecvted to know the breeding. My opinion is that we will soon return to judging Variety as there are so many good birds being benched, the way to split them is to return to Variety.

Cheers Clearwing

 

 

Thanks Clearwing!

 

That's all I could do really - judge on appearance - as the bird did fit the greywing standard reasonably well. Had it been then only greywing benched with nothing else to compare it too I probably wouldn't have questioned it as much either.

 

It would be nice wouldn't it if you could breed this very beautiful variety for it's variety not for meeting the current size and feather standard. It's one of the varieties that suffers so badly when you try and up the size, then the features that attracted people in the first place - namely the strong body colour contrasted with the beautiful clear wings - are lost...... seems somewhat backwards to me.

 

 

i agree with this totally i dont understand why the birds are all being mutated so far beond their original look

what is it that makes people want a budgie that looks like a buffalo or a lion head has been attached

these poor birds can not even see and the eye problems must be high matainance

im breeding my birds for the way i like them to be and not for what the bench are by other breeders yet they will be at show standeds as required by variety yes i understand that it wont be easy as the feather quantaty really overides most these days i do find this quiet sad relisticly its the big heavy birds that cant even hod their own weaight to fly that i will be steering clear of breeding

mabe i will never win but i will have tall long birds with lovely perciced markings proportion nice feather and blow they will be able to see but rather than hidden eyes the feather will direct over the eyes much like the old school birds i feel that the birds are way more showy than the birds breed by some people with the big feather all over their head and they still look beautiful with a full chest tapering down than just one solid bird with so much feather when you pick it up theirs no bird just feather

 

my opinion only :(

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Well GB I wish you luck,am looing foward to seeing your birds on the bench.

They will be like a breath of fresh air. :(

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GB, I like your opinion.

 

Speaking as a dog person, not a bird person, I think it is important for the breeders who love their breed (or species) to stick to their guns and keep their animals moderate. Not to allow current trends to sway them into breeding oddities. We humans can exagerate any detail of an animal through selective breeding, and without some breeders maintaining healthy, moderate stock, the people with grossly exagerated ones, will find they have bred themselves into a corner someday, and will need YOUR stock to help them get out of it.

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Interesting post, a problem that didn't exist prior to importation, why?, because in Australia we kept our clearwings pure, never mating them to greywings or cinnamonwings. And our judjes, judged for variety, not just size, shape and colour. I can remember clearwings being wrong classed because their feet were not grey enough hence they were suspected of being cinnamon clearwings. Unfortunately our fellow fanciers oversees were not so variety concsious and when you compare the Aust clearwing to the imported clearwing, they are like two seperate mutations.

Having judged for over 30 years myself I can only recommend you judge solely on appearance, judge each bird before you on what "standard" it meets , you cannot be expecvted to know the breeding. My opinion is that we will soon return to judging Variety as there are so many good birds being benched, the way to split them is to return to Variety.

Cheers Clearwing

 

 

Thanks Clearwing!

 

That's all I could do really - judge on appearance - as the bird did fit the greywing standard reasonably well. Had it been then only greywing benched with nothing else to compare it too I probably wouldn't have questioned it as much either.

 

It would be nice wouldn't it if you could breed this very beautiful variety for it's variety not for meeting the current size and feather standard. It's one of the varieties that suffers so badly when you try and up the size, then the features that attracted people in the first place - namely the strong body colour contrasted with the beautiful clear wings - are lost...... seems somewhat backwards to me.

 

 

i agree with this totally i dont understand why the birds are all being mutated so far beond their original look

what is it that makes people want a budgie that looks like a buffalo or a lion head has been attached

these poor birds can not even see and the eye problems must be high matainance

im breeding my birds for the way i like them to be and not for what the bench are by other breeders yet they will be at show standeds as required by variety yes i understand that it wont be easy as the feather quantaty really overides most these days i do find this quiet sad relisticly its the big heavy birds that cant even hod their own weaight to fly that i will be steering clear of breeding

mabe i will never win but i will have tall long birds with lovely perciced markings proportion nice feather and blow they will be able to see but rather than hidden eyes the feather will direct over the eyes much like the old school birds i feel that the birds are way more showy than the birds breed by some people with the big feather all over their head and they still look beautiful with a full chest tapering down than just one solid bird with so much feather when you pick it up theirs no bird just feather

 

my opinion only :o

 

Genericblue , That is exactly what show breeding is all about , Breed the bird that you like , show it and convince others that your beautiful creation is the ideal.

Keep it up. ;)

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:) Hello Nubbly,

 

Like the effort you have put into your post. Birds coming along also.

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