White-headed Buffalo Weaver

About the white-headed buffalo weaver

The white-headed buffalo weaver, sometimes called the white-faced buffalo-weaver, is a passerine bird in the weaver family, Ploceidae, native to East Africa. Its common name comes from its habit of following African buffalo herds, picking off the insects the buffalo stir up as they move through the grass. German naturalist Eduard Rüppell first described the species in 1845, and two subspecies are now recognized.

The bird measures 170 to 190 mm (6.7–7.5 in) long and weighs 57 to 85 g (2.0–3.0 oz). As the name suggests, its head and underparts are white, but the rest of the bird is far from plain: a vividly orange-red rump and undertail coverts stand out against dark brown thighs, and narrow white bands appear on the wings, especially when they're spread out to the side. The bill is conical and black. Males and females look alike and are hard to tell apart in the field. The two subspecies differ mainly in tail color — D. d. dinemelli has a brown tail, while D. d. boehmi has a black one.

Behavior and diet

Like most weavers, the white-headed buffalo weaver is gregarious, foraging on the ground in groups of three to six birds, often alongside starlings. It eats mainly insects, especially beetles and butterflies, along with fruits and seeds. The species has a varied vocal repertoire, including calls described as parrot-like — a "skwieeer," a "kiiyerr," and a ringing, repetitious "tew" — plus chuckles, whistles, and trills such as "tsu-weely-weely-wair" heard around breeding and roosting sites. Birds often perch in trees and hang upside down, and they can be noisy, especially when defending breeding and roosting groups against intruders; these disputes are mostly vocal and rarely turn fatal.

Breeding pairs are monogamous and build their nests together. The breeding season tracks local rainfall patterns rather than a fixed calendar. During courtship, males display to females by spreading their wings to show off the white wing patches and orange-red tail coverts. Nests are oval, about 570 mm (22 in) wide, built by pushing materials together rather than weaving them, with a short entrance tube opening downward roughly 2 to 4 m (6.6–13.1 ft) above the ground. The interior is lined with soft material and usually divided into several rooms, protected on the outside by thorny branches. Large trees often hold several nests at once, and other species, including the African pygmy-falcon, are known to move into old buffalo weaver nests instead of building their own. The female incubates a clutch of 3 to 5 greyish to pale blue eggs, marked with red, brown, and olive, for 11 to 14 days, and both parents feed the chicks once they hatch.

Range and habitat

The white-headed buffalo weaver is native to Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. It favors dry, open country — savanna and shrubland, particularly dry brush and acacia thickets — where it can forage on the ground and nest in scattered trees.

Conservation status

The white-headed buffalo weaver is rated Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, in a 2018 assessment by BirdLife International. No specific threats or conservation programs are documented for it.