Quelea

red-billed quelea

red-billed quelea

quelea, (Quelea quelea), also called red-billed quelea, or dioch, small brownish bird of Africa, belonging to the songbird family Ploceidae (order Passeriformes). It occurs in such enormous numbers that it often destroys grain crops and, by roosting, breaks branches. Efforts to control quelea populations with poisons, napalm, pathogens, and electronic devices have had poor success; but dynamiting the dense colonies, which may contain more than two million pairs in less than 50 hectares (125 acres), has achieved local control.

View a flock of red-billed queleas at the Etosha National ParkSee all videos for this article

Queleas breed in thorn-scrub country: every bush and tree for miles around may contain hundreds of their globular nests, which are built by the males (black-faced, with pinkish foreparts at that season). Each pair has two or three young, which within the year may wander hundreds of miles and breed in their turn. The “locust bird” plague has been the indirect and complicated result of human exploitation of marginal land for stock raising and of the large-scale cultivation of grains. Queleas are thought to be among the most populous bird species in the world.