All species › Passerines › Weavers › Red-Headed Quelea
Red-Headed Quelea | Quelea erythrops
Roodkopwever | Quelea Cabecirrojo
The Red-Headed Quelea is a nomadic quelea that arrives with the summer rains in the north and east of the region, breeds in reedbeds and tall grass and then disappears again. The breeding male has a red head with a blackish throat; females and non-breeding birds are plain, streaky brown.
Voice
A soft, sizzling chatter from flocks, and as song a fast, grating chik-chik-chirrrr from reeds or tall grass; flocks in flight call with a dry chip.
Recording: Gary Allport — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11 to 12 cm, with a conical bill. The breeding male has a scarlet to crimson head, from forehead well onto the nape, with a blackish chin and throat that contrast with the red; the bill is black. The upperparts are brown with black streaks, the flight feathers have yellowish edges and the underparts are pale buff, sometimes with a reddish wash on the breast. The female is streaky brown with a pale supercilium, a buff breast and a horn-coloured bill. The non-breeding male resembles the female.
Confusion species
Cardinal Quelea (Quelea cardinalis) is smaller; its red hood reaches the breast but less far onto the nape, and the throat is red without black. Red-Billed Quelea (Quelea quelea) has a red or orange-red bill all year; males with a red hood usually have a black mask across forehead and face, not just a dark throat. Red-Headed Weaver (Anaplectes rubriceps) has a pinkish-red bill and a white belly and lives in trees. Females are hard to separate from female Red-Billed Quelea and Southern Red Bishop (Euplectes orix); the horn-coloured bill usually rules out Red-Billed Quelea.
Habitat
Vleis, reedbeds, flooded grassland and rank edges of lakes and rivers, often near fields and sugarcane. It breeds in dense colonies in reeds or tall grass; the nest is a small, thin-walled ball of fine grass with a side entrance. It eats grass seeds and, when breeding, insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Within the region an irregular summer visitor to Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, northern Botswana (Okavango and Chobe), Namibia's Zambezi Region and north-eastern South Africa (mainly KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Limpopo); numbers and breeding sites vary greatly from year to year. Beyond the region widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, from Senegal to Ethiopia and south to Tanzania.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
After good summer rains search reedbeds and wet grassland, especially in the north and east of the region. Check every bird in flocks of Red-Billed Quelea: a Red-Headed Quelea stands out by its black bill and red head with a dark throat.
Conservation status
Not threatened. Widespread but nomadic; locally numbers fluctuate strongly from year to year.
Scientific name
Quelea erythrops | (Hartlaub, 1848)
Hartlaub described the species in 1848 as Ploceus erythrops; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Quelea was introduced in 1850 by Reichenbach. The origin of Quelea is uncertain; Linnaeus gave no explanation. It may derive from medieval Latin qualea, 'quail', for the vast flocks, like the biblical quails. erythrops comes from the Greek eruthros, 'red', and ōps, 'face' — for the male's red head. The specimen the first description was based on came from São Tomé.