Quelea Bird - African Bird Pest

The quelea bird, or Red-billed Quelea, of Africa sometimes breeds in such numbers that flocks can destroy crops. An oubreak may be imminent in some parts of Africa.

These days we seem to hear a lot more about declining and endangered bird species than we do about pest birds, which makes recent reports from Africa about the dreaded quelea bird all the more intriguing. Quelea birds, Quelea quelea, are one of the African weaverbirds. They travel in huge flocks, and in years when rainfall is good and cereal crops do well, they are voracious crop pests, visiting fields in flocks of millions of birds and decimating entire crops.

Some areas of Africa are braced for a 2007 Quelea outbreak when cereal crops are ripe and the weather turns dry. When threatened by a plague of quelea birds, farmers spray with quelatox, a poison that is highly toxic to birds (in North America, the same poison is sold under the name fenthion, and is used as an aerial spray against mosquitoes—usually in concentrations too low to kill birds). Millions of quelea birds are killed every year but they rebound and return.

Intensive farming in Africa has evidently encouraged an increase in quelea birds, while poison applications doubtless kill a lot of other birds as well as beneficial insects and possibly other species. Threatened farmers need a different approach, such as deterrence, encouraging biodiversity in both plants and animals, and treating Quelea birds as a resource rather than a problem. What eats them? Can their feathers, nests, eggs etc. be used? We have to stop dousing our environment and our food crops with toxins.

What do you think we should do about pest birds?

Read more about the Red-billed Quelea:

Quelea quelea - African Pest Bird

Sources:

“Zimbabwe: Quelea Birds Spotted” Chinhoyi. The Herald, June 26, 2007: allAfrica.com