The Whiteface male cockatiel, shown here, is a strikingly beautiful bird with its charcoal colored feathers and bright white face.
The Whiteface mutation prevents the deposition of lipochrome (yellow and red) pigmentation on the feathers, causing the dark melanin plumage and the white face.
Female whiteface cockatiels retain the immature grey face (without the cheekpatch) and the barring of the underside of the tail feathers.
White Face is a stunning, fairly common mutation. And fairly self-explanatory! The mutation actually removes all yellow and orange pigmentation from the tiel, so anything that was normally yellow or orange on any other above mutations, is turned white when combined with the whiteface mutation. The face and head becomes a solid white. In all young birds and the adult females, the face is still duller, but it’s a dull grey with a fainter grey cheek spot, rather than the dull yellow and orange (remember, there is no yellow or orange in a white face tiel). The adult whiteface male will get a bright solid white head after he has his first moult. Also note that a whiteface pied will have white patches instead of the yellow, as well as the whiteface pearl will have white speckles. Because the whiteface mutation removes all the yellow pigmentation, a whiteface chick hatches out of it’s egg with white fuzz, whereas any other mutation is a yellow fuzzy chick� Therefore a whiteface chick is known to be white faced from the day it hatches!
A careful note to make is the albino cockatiel. There is no such thing as an albino cockatiel. The solid white cockatiels, with red eyes, are actually the lutino (the solid yellow/white body) and the white face (the lack of a cheek spot, and the lack of any yellow or orange pigment) mutations combined together, making the bird totally and completely white (with the red eyes of the lutino).
