Greywing Budgerigar Mutation - Historical Notes

Historical Notes

The first breeding of a Greywing in captivity could have been as early as 1875, when the director of Breslau Zoo in Kassel, Germany, bred a budgerigar with a description exactly matching the present-day Greywing Light Green . This bird died when six months old, and no further birds of this description were reported for more than forty years.

In 1919 Mrs Ransome or Ranson of Wimbledon, London, sent an example of a variety she was breeding to J W Marsden, which she called Jades. It was later identified as a Greywing green. She bred this from a 'blue-bred green hen' and a 'badly coloured Yellow cock', so either the Yellow cock was a Greywing and the hen split Greywing, or the bird bred was not a Greywing at all but a deeply suffused Yellow.

G F Hedges established a Greywing strain from birds obtained, it is believed, from the Blanchard aviaries in Toulouse, France. His first Greywings appeared in 1920 . B Jackson of Bingley in West Yorkshire also obtained Greywings from the same French aviaries in 1923, so it seems likely that Mon A Blanchard was the first to establish the Greywing variety in Europe, although there is an opinion that these might have been Yellows of deep suffusion.

The Greywing variety was gradually established during the 1920s in Germany, France, Great Britain and Australia, although in Australia the appearance of the Clearwing mutation in Greywing stock soon afterwards led to the two mutations intermingling.

In the early 1920s birds of this variety were known variously as Jades, Apple Greens, May Greens or Satinettes in the green series and as Pearls or Silverwings in the blue series. One of the first tasks of the newly-established Colour Committee of the British Budgerigar Society was to sort out this confusion of names, and on their recommendation the standard name 'Greywing' was adopted.

By the late 1920s the Greywing had been recognised by the British Budgerigar Society as a standard variety, and most of the top breeders had stocks. A Greywing Blue was exhibited at the Crystal Palace show in 1931 by Mrs Mallam of Redhill, Surrey, and won fourth best in show, and at the same show in the following year Mr Ivor I J Symes gained second place with a team of Greywings bred from a pair he had imported from Germany in 1930.

Greywings continued to increase during the 1930s, but the new mutations appearing around that time, such as the Cinnamon, Opaline, Ino, Grey and Clearwing, began to compete for the attention of breeders. After the war, when stocks were being established again, it was these latter varieties which caught the fanciers' interest, and the Greywing became (and remained) a rare variety bred by only a few specialists. In 1981 it was reported that no one was known to have a substantial stud of Greywings, although at least three breeders had or wanted Greywings .