Quelea erythrops
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~20%
The red-headed quelea (Quelea erythrops) is a species of bird in the family Ploceidae. It is found in Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The red-headed quelea was collected by Carl Weiss on Sao Tome island in 1847, and after its arrival at the Hamburg Museum described for science for the first time by Gustav Hartlaub in 1848, who named it Ploceus erythrops. In 1951, Hans von Boetticher regarded the cardinal quelea and red-headed quelea sufficiently different from the red-billed quelea to create a new genus Queleopsis.
The species epithet erythrops derives from the Greek word ἐρυθρός (eruthros), meaning "red" and ὄψ (ops) meaning "eye" or "face", referring to the rufous or red face. Ludwig Reichenbach gave the species its first English name in 1863: red-headed dioch. Other... Wikipedia →
Call0:05
Mozambique · 2017
© Gary Allport · XC391200 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kidepo Valley National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 2 | Ruaha National Park | 🇹🇿 Tanzania | |
| 3 | Murchison Falls National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 4 | Akagera National Park | 🇷🇼 Rwanda | |
| 5 | Queen Elizabeth National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 6 | Kibale National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 7 | Lake Mburo National Park | 🇺🇬 Uganda | |
| 8 | Serengeti National Park | 🇹🇿 Tanzania |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazzaville | 🇨🇬 Republic of the Congo | |
| 2 | Durban | 🇿🇦 South Africa |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Red-headed Quelea sighting in Murchison Falls National Park on a given day, based on 33 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 252nd most-seen of the 424 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 20%, if each day is a fresh chance.
March and May–July
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Red-headed Quelea in Murchison Falls National Park on a given day, against under 5% in April and August–February, the lowest months.
Between 7 and 10 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Red-headed Quelea sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Among the best
Of the 8 parks where we can rate Red-headed Quelea sightings, Murchison Falls National Park ranks 3rd at under 5%, level with the leaders once rounded. The best odds are in Kidepo Valley National Park (Uganda, under 5%) and Ruaha National Park (Tanzania, under 5%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Red-headed Quelea is recorded against all the birds logged in Murchison Falls National Park (33 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
