Violet Budgerigar Mutation - Historical Notes

Historical Notes

In Australia, Mr A Burton of Sydney was breeding Violets by 1934 and Mr Harold Pier exhibited a violet in the same year.

In Europe, the first mention of a bird which might have been a visual violet was by C af Enehjelm in 1935 in Copenhagen. In a letter to the Budgerigar Bulletin, he said he had bred a Cobalt, "which I would call violet". In a later article he gave full details of his violet birds, remarking that earlier birds he had seen which were bred in Germany in the late 1920s and marketed as violets were little different from normal Cobalts and lost their violet colour with age. His first true violet, mentioned above, was bred from an apparent dark green/blue cock obtained from a friend and a cobalt hen. This dark Green/blue cock was "very heavily suffused with blue (cobalt)". Presumably, it was in fact a SF Violet Light Green/blue . He went on to breed several more Violets from the progeny of this bird.

In 1924 in England and 1932 in Australia birds called "Royal Blues" were bred, but these were not Violets. In the UK the opinion of the highly respected budgerigar breeder, C H Rogers, writing in 1937, was that a true violet was first seen in England at the Cambridge Diploma Show that year. The Violet hen was exhibited by Stevenson and Tucker. As they had eight other birds of the same colour they must have first bred Violets some years earlier.

As Violet Light Greens are very similar in appearance to dark greens it seems likely that a small number of Violet Light Greens were being bred in several places in the 1920s, masquerading as Dark Greens. Their true nature remained hidden, only being revealed when they were mated to birds of the blue series. This could not happen until blue budgerigars became readily available, which was not until the 1930s.