The Red-billed Quelea is the most numerous, and most distructive bird.

January 26, 2017 1:20 PM

The Red-billed Quelea has been called Africa's most hated bird. Their giant, devouring flocks put murmuration of starlings to shame.
posted by Bee'sWing (25 comments total)

So, kind of like the passenger pigeon, except the flocks are a lot smaller.
posted by rikschell at 1:26 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

I thought of Passenger Pigeons too, and it made me wonder if ecological change was making Queleas more numerous.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:27 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

oh my god it's birdpocalypse now
posted by poffin boffin at 1:28 PM on January 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

It says right in the article they have become more numerous due to farming of grains.
posted by fshgrl at 1:33 PM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

"destructive"
posted by My Dad at 1:38 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Good thing Shakespeare didn't happen to mention them.
posted by yhbc at 1:43 PM on January 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

do they ever make it more than a few feet up in the air?
posted by jrishel at 1:52 PM on January 26, 2017

flocks of fast-moving tiny birds and high-compression large-block video codecs are not a good combination
posted by GuyZero at 1:58 PM on January 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

I saw these flying over while waiting for customs at the Malawi/Tanzania border many years ago. Flock after flock after flock. Each flock was pretty big, but I was there for ten or fifteen minutes and they just kept coming. I estimated at the time maybe 500,000 birds, give or take a few hundred thousand. They were too far away to ID except the sheer numbers meant it couldn’t be anything else. Amazing.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 2:03 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is it wrong of me to imagine a mass of tiny birds shambling forward groaning GRAAAAAINS! in their little voices?
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:42 PM on January 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

Probably, but I doubt any of us are inclined to fault you for it.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:59 PM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

From the video, farmers kill 200 million a year with explosives and gasoline. You know, eventually they're going to become flame proof at this rate.
posted by Hactar at 3:24 PM on January 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

They're going about this all wrong.

We managed to make passenger pigeons extinct.
Eat 'em.
Problem solved.
posted by BlueHorse at 4:44 PM on January 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

There's barely two bites of meat on a dove so I don't think you would have much luck with a weaver finch, but, according to Wikipedia, people feed the victims of those giant gasoline bombs in the video to the village pigs and dogs.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:00 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

oh my god it's birdpocalypse now

Our police are powerless to stop the Birdpocalypse!
posted by tobascodagama at 5:02 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's barely two bites of meat on a dove so I don't think you would have much luck with a weaver finch

Yeah, but (a) there's a shit-ton of 'em, and (b) stew!
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:25 PM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Tippi Hedren would be most disturbed...
posted by jim in austin at 5:26 PM on January 26, 2017

My father worked on a project involving blowing up trees full of these back in the 80's in Tanzania.
posted by boilermonster at 11:50 PM on January 26, 2017

Red-billed quelea is the new ortolan?
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:24 AM on January 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think the analogy is closer to the locust plagues (in America, the Rocky Mountain grasshopper -- featured in the Little House books) than to passenger pigeons.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:17 AM on January 27, 2017

Well... that escalated quickly.
posted by yossarian1 at 5:49 AM on January 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I can see how they could be destructive to crops, but I bet they leave a shitload of fertilizer behind.
posted by TedW at 5:56 AM on January 27, 2017

I bet they leave a shitload of fertilizer behind.

They eat in the fields but they roost (and shit) in trees. So the fertilizer is not going where the farmers need it. And that much fertilize is likely to kill the trees, if it is anything like the heron roosts I've seen.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:32 AM on January 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

The sound their wings make!!! Wow.
posted by haikuku at 6:50 AM on January 27, 2017

There's barely two bites of meat on a dove so I don't think you would have much luck with a weaver finch

From Birds Britannica, sparrow pie: 'An Elizabethan recipe recommended either larks or sparrows prepared in mutton broth, flavoured with whole mace and pepper in claret, with marigold leaves, rosewater, verjuice, vinegar, sugar and marrow or sweet butter’
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 2:43 AM on January 28, 2017 [2 favorites]