For those with Lutino/Albino birds.

Once a week or once every other week, I grab the budgies to do a visual once over. They don't let me really handle them often, so I make a point to do it every so often to make sure everything looks alright and to help with pin feathers.

This morning while I was looking over Pigpen, I noticed that there appeared to be blood on the outter edge of her wing. Obviously, I freaked out. Blood and birds clearly isn't good, and it's even worse that the nearest emergency vet that sees exotics and avians is 45 minutes away by bus.

Anyway, after examining her more thoroughly, I noticed that she wasn't bleeding. The outermost feather on her right wing is a blood feather and the blood line is very visible. Is this normal? I've never noticed it before.

I had this with my Lutino cockatiel on her wings, kind of came and went.

Julsiebean wrote:

I had this with my Lutino cockatiel on her wings, kind of came and went.

Glad it's normal then. I was horrified when I first saw it, and she was none too happy that I was stretching her wing every which way to get a better look.

Very normal to be able to see the blood line. On the dark plumaged birds you can see the blood line too. It's just not as prominent so you don't really notice it. So long as the bird's not bleeding to the point you can't stop the bleeding it's no big deal even if you see blood/dried blood from a broken blood feather. If it's actively bleeding, you'll have to stop the bleeding of course.

patdbunny wrote:

Very normal to be able to see the blood line. On the dark plumaged birds you can see the blood line too. It's just not as prominent so you don't really notice it. So long as the bird's not bleeding to the point you can't stop the bleeding it's no big deal even if you see blood/dried blood from a broken blood feather. If it's actively bleeding, you'll have to stop the bleeding of course.

I'd never noticed it with her before, so I thought she was bleeding at first. Grabbed her and noticed it was just the blood line which hasn't been visible in the 9 months I've had her. I wonder why it is now.

She's never broken a blood feather and she's never bled yet, so knock on wood she won't. I have noticed that if I pull the sheath off a pin feather for her, there's occasionally a drop of blood. Not very noticable, but it's there.

You generally aren't going to see any blood lines as once the feather's completely in, there's no more blood in it. Do you mean there's no blood in the feather, but you're seeing like some remaining dried blood in the shaft from after the blood's receded? If that's the case, yes, I've seen that too. Not exactly sure what that is. I think that might be from overpreening and slight trauma caused to the blood feather shaft when there's blood in there. This I see off and on, but it's not a constant thing.

patdbunny wrote:

Do you mean there's no blood in the feather, but you're seeing like some remaining dried blood in the shaft from after the blood's receded?

No, it's not dried blood. If you're looking at her, you can see a red line down her right wing's outter edge. When I spread her wings to get a better look, it looked like blood in the shaft of the feather. It's maybe about 2cm long total and appears to be going to the outermost flight feather.

Can you take a pic? I'll take a pic of an albino IRN wing later and post.

It's not showing up that clear, but if you look in the box, you can see a darker line at the edge of the wing. The blood line also looks like it's receded back up into the feather.

The picture's not that great -- webcams aren't good for that kind of thing. Also, No Name kept flying over and trying to hover over her, presumably to make sure I wasn't killing her.