Red-billed quelea
The red-billed quelea is the most abundant wild bird on the planet, with an estimated population of 1.5 billion birds. Some sources have this figure as high as 1000 billion, which I found hard to believe. When I asked my bird ringing mentor and weaver enthusiast, Dieter Oschadleus for his take on the issue, he said: "There are LOTS of them". The estimates vary greatly because of lack of understanding the biology of the quelea, making estimations of the quelea population size difficult.
"For instance, many large colonies breed in inaccessible areas in Africa and the numbers breeding in different years would be different, based on environmental conditions. Because the global population is high, it is possible for there to be occasional large fluctuations in total numbers in different years or time periods (in addition to the inaccuracy of any estimates)."
"The short answer is that there are lots of quelea and all methods of population estimates are fraught with assumptions."
"For total population, take your pick!"
Red-billed queleas mainly eat seeds of cereals and grasses, supplemented with arthropods taken from vegetation and in flight. It is highly gregarious, living in flocks which can be have millions of birds, that can completely devastate cultivated areas. The sheer size of the biggest flocks is scary and even intimidates elephants that will evacuate an area when such a flock settles nearby.
In some areas, they are subjected to pest control measures, but even the destruction of 100 million birds in a year does not have an impact other than temporary relief for the crops in that area.
Like the common household pet, the budgie, they actually show more than one standard colour. This phenomenon is called polymorphism.
Red-billed quelea
The red-billed quelea is the most abundant wild bird on the planet, with an estimated population of 1.5 billion birds. Some sources have this figure as high as 1000 billion, which I found hard to believe. When I asked my bird ringing mentor and weaver enthusiast, Dieter Oschadleus for his take on the issue, he said: "There are LOTS of them". The estimates vary greatly because of lack of understanding the biology of the quelea, making estimations of the quelea population size difficult.
"For instance, many large colonies breed in inaccessible areas in Africa and the numbers breeding in different years would be different, based on environmental conditions. Because the global population is high, it is possible for there to be occasional large fluctuations in total numbers in different years or time periods (in addition to the inaccuracy of any estimates)."
"The short answer is that there are lots of quelea and all methods of population estimates are fraught with assumptions."
"For total population, take your pick!"
Red-billed queleas mainly eat seeds of cereals and grasses, supplemented with arthropods taken from vegetation and in flight. It is highly gregarious, living in flocks which can be have millions of birds, that can completely devastate cultivated areas. The sheer size of the biggest flocks is scary and even intimidates elephants that will evacuate an area when such a flock settles nearby.
In some areas, they are subjected to pest control measures, but even the destruction of 100 million birds in a year does not have an impact other than temporary relief for the crops in that area.
Like the common household pet, the budgie, they actually show more than one standard colour. This phenomenon is called polymorphism.