FINCHforum

Hi
Is there any way to differentiate between the females of the Red Cheeked Cordon Bleu finch and Blue Headed / Blue Headed Cordon Blue?

My female Red Cheeked died with egg-bind and I bought a female from the local petstore. The bird was on it own in a cage and they said it is a Red cheeked female and not a blue headed because the the beak is red and not black. However this is not true, the blue headed cordon bleu's have got pinkish red beaks. Is there a sure way to differentiate between the females of these two species?

I know that you can cross-breed them, but I don't want to do that.

My apologies.
I meant to say: Is there any way to differentiate between the females of the Red Cheeked Cordon Bleu finch and Blue Headed / Blue Capped Cordon Blue?

Blue-capped Cordon Bleu and Red-cheeked Cordon Bleu hens are difficult to differentiate, but if you look closely, you can see some differences. A Blue-capped hen will have some blue on the top of her head, a fuschia-colored beak, a rounded body, and she will stand fairly tall on the perch. A Red-cheeked hen will have only brown on the top of her head, a slightly longer more pointy pink beak with a dark tip, a slightly slimmer body, and she will tend to sit lower on the perch, more leaning forward.

Here is another thread with an excellent description and photos provided by Mary.

http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17490

This has been discussed many times recently. This is a perfect example of why the Species forum, when set up by separate species, would have made it easier for someone to find this type answer. I'm also going to move this to the Species forum, since this question is more about CB descriptions than breeding.

The links in that other post have been truncated

Here's the post again with TinyUrl links that should keep the links working right for us all:

There are 3 types of Cordon Bleus: Red Cheek (RCCB), Blue Capped (BCCB) and Blue Breasted (BBCB). In all three (BBCB, RCCB, and BCCB) the females are paler in color intensity than the males.

BBCB (Blue Breasted Cordon Bleu) both male and female have a grayish/silver beak. Females are noticibly paler in color than the males.

Pictures of both male and female BBCB - http://tinyurl.com/6lmhqmu

RCCB (Red Cheek Cordon Bleu) both male and female have rosey color beaks. Both have brown on the top of their heads. Males have red cheek patches. Female the blue on the face barely goes over the eye area with the brown covering the rest of the top of the head.

Male and Female RCCB - http://tinyurl.com/4xo5eoc

BCCB (Blue Capped Cordon Bleu) both male and female have rosey color beaks. Male has blue covering the top of the head. Female has blue well covering the eye area and going up partway on the side of the head towards the top, with brown covering the rest of the head.

Male and Female BCCB - http://tinyurl.com/7pluwdg