Small Zimbabwe Bird

30 October 2008, 02:53

Kensco

Small Zimbabwe Bird

When hunting this year in Zimbabwe we watched flocks of a small bird, the size of a sparrow, that flew in what looked like flocks of 1000 birds at times. They swarmed as much as anything, and the sound from their wings was really something. It certainly drowned out any other sound. They flew in such tight formations that it made you wonder how they kept from crashing into each other. Their wing-speed wasn't like a hummingbird, but in flight they reminded me of a swarm of bees, locusts, or hummingbirds, the way they could hover and dart around.

They would hover over water, drinking I guess, then settle in a tree in a densely packed cloud of birds.

Can anyone tell me the name of that small bird? I've forgotten and was trying to describe them to someone yesterday. I believe the PH told me that they tried to irradicate them in the past since they were very destructive to crops or trees.

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30 October 2008, 03:04

David Hulme

After the 1991/92 drought, there was a quelia population explosion in the lowveld. One had to see it to believe it - millions upon millions of them, all over the place, in huge colonies. The raptors would feast all day long. Landowners harvested them by the ton and rationed them to labor or sold them to croc farmers. They can be a real menace to crop farming efforts in the highveld, but since there are no longer any highveld crop farming efforts...

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30 October 2008, 03:52

zimbabwe

We used to shoot them and a PH friend I shot with had the object of seeing how many he could kill with only one shot. Believe you me the number is quite large even with the rather mediocre Zimbabwean 12 gauge shells. Wish I could remember exactly what was the number of birds killed. Only thing I can find written in my notes is over 30 with one shot. I know he said he had killed a far higher number than that.

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30 October 2008, 10:48

shakari

Rikkie is quite right. Incidentally, Red Billed Quelea are reputed to be the most numerous bird in the world (haven't counted them personally though

) In some areas, these birds are so numerous they'll strip a field very quickly and some farmers will wait till they roost in the evenings and then set out a bunch of 45 gallon drums of fuel and blow the lot up to protect their crops. - I seem to remember that the BBC once made a documentary about it.

Regarding shooting 'em, a few years ago, we wanted some for bait so took a client into a bow hunting blind that was surrounded by very dense thorn bush, waited a few minutes and then told him to fire one barrel of 12 gauge out of the window. - No need to aim, just fire. When we went outside, he'd hit a fair number, but a huge number of birds in their panic had impaled themselves on the thorns........... the whole area was covered in dead quelea hanging in the trees like Christmas decorations. If I remember correctly, we picked up a total of something like 263 birds and had bait for a week plus enough to feed the trackers and their families.

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