Peachfaced
Lovebird Mutations: Blue, Whitefaced Blue,
Seagreen
 Not surprisingly, Blue and Whitefaced Blue (WFB) create a lot
of confusion for people. The primary reason for
this is that they are so closely related, and
many breeders simply don't understand what the
differences are. Many Blues are sold at bird fairs
as WFBs, Seagreens are often sold as Blues, and so
on. Some of this is due to unscrupulous breeders
lying about what they're selling, but mostly it
is simply because the breeders don't know either.
Blue is the older of the two mutations,
originating in Holland in 1963. A bird which
shows this mutation lacks most of the red and
yellow pigments which are present in a normally
colored Peachfaced. However, unlike the
"true" blue mutation of the Masked
lovebird, a Blue Peachfaced still has some
red and yellow pigment in its feathers, most
notably in the slightly creamy color of the face
and the solid orange band across the forehead.
This "incomplete" elimination of the
yellow and red pigments is why this mutation is
sometimes referred to as "semi-blue".
 Whitefaced Blue originated
in the early 1980's. Like the Blue, it is not a
"true" blue mutation. A true blue would
take ALL of the red and yellow pigment out of the
bird, but WFB still leaves traces of each color,
though LESS of each color than in the Blue. The
face of a Whitefaced Blue is pure white, though
on the forehead, there is often still a faint
orange suffusion. This suffusion is considered a
fault, for show purposes, and top WFB show birds
show little or none of this orange. If a true
blue existed in the peachfaced, combining that
mutation with the lutino mutation would produce a
true albino, a pure white bird, with no trace of
yellow. When crossed with lutino, WFB and Blue each
produce a bird with visible yellow. The Creamino
(A Blue Ino) is more fully a yellow/cream color
than the WFB Ino (Sometimes inaccurately called
an Albino), but the WFB Ino does have a good deal
of yellow color in its feathers.
 Contributing to the
confusion between WFB and Blue is the fact that
they are "alleles", meaning that they
occur on the same gene of the same chromosome
pair. Thus, a bird can have 2 WFB genes, or 2 Blue
genes, or 1 of each, but cannot have two of each.
When a bird has one WFB gene and one Blue gene, the
two interact to produce what is called a
"seagreen" this bird is frequently
mistaken for, and sold as, a Blue, but actually is
half Blue and Half WFB. The face and forehead of
the seagreen are essentially identical to those
of the Blue, but the body color is closer to the
color of a normal green bird. If you put a Blue and
a seagreen side by side, the body of the SG will
be visibly more green.
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