This is Birdnode.

In Africa, south of the Sahara, there's a bird that roams the countryside in flocks,

horns, really, of 2 million or more.

They fly in such tightly synchronized masses.

They can be mistaken at a distance for clouds of smoke.

The birds are red-billed quilia.

It's estimated there are 1.5 billion of them, making them the most abundant of all wild birds.

The sparrow-sized red-billed quilia, which is in the weaver family, has a stout, seed-cracking

bill.

The birds are mostly brown, but breeding males have red and black feathered heads.

Quilia nests in enormous colonies.

A single tree may be hung with hundreds, even thousands of carefully woven nests.

Single colonies can cover hundreds of acres, totaling tens of millions of birds.

Unfortunately, their tastes include cultivated crops, like millet.

In fact, the increased planting of cereal crops over the last 50 years may have dramatically increased the number of quilia.

But, setting aside their taste for crops, the site of a couple million red-billed quilia,

swirling in unison, and creating ever-changing patterns in the air, is one of nature's most amazing spectacle.

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