Weavers | Ploceidae

Wevers | Tejedores

Small to medium seed-eaters with a short, heavy conical bill and strong feet, which do not pile their nests up but knot them. The male starts with a ring: he tears a narrow strip from a reed or palm leaf, loops it round a stem or thin branch and pulls the end through with his bill. From that ring he works forward and back until a closed globe stands there, the entrance at the bottom or the top and in some species a short spout below it; bill and foot serve as the loom, and the work takes two or three days. The female does not build but inspects and lines the inside with down and seed heads; if she rejects it, the nest is pulled apart and begun again. A male builds nest after nest for successive females, and a good reedbed or tree carries tens to hundreds of them together.