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I have two sweet, super-friendly cockatiels named Schala and Janus.

One is the traditional yellow and grey with the rosy cheeks, while the other is white and grey (her face should change to white when she gets older).

They are both about 7 months old, but I never had them DNA sexed.

Are there any signs that might shed some light on their genders?

I know they both like to perform the wolf call; they both (but not at the same time) like to just barely spread their wings away from their breast and get very vocal (whistling and trying to say "pretty bird", which ends up sounding more like a squawk than actual words (it's insanely cute)).

Their tail feathers are black-and-yellow-striped and black-and-white-striped respectively, but they are so young, I'm not sure if that coloration means anything. I just read a random comment somewhere which says the stripes are some sort of gender indicator.

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On traditionally-colored cockatiels, once they've been through 1 or 2 molts at most (maybe too early for yours), striped tail feathers are clear marks of a female bird.

With color mutations, there is a lot more uncertainty, but this page has a lot of hints and pictures.

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  • Pardon me, if I misunderstood, but you are saying it might be too early to tell for my birds, as of yet? I don't think either one of them have molted yet, but I'm not certain of what a tell-tale sign of that would be either, except an extra-itchy head maybe :)
    – VoidKing
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 15:34
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    @VoidKing: yes, it's too early to tell from the plumage. And you will know they're molting when there's tiny down feathers everywhere... Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 16:05

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