Red-billed quelea trees during the moonless period each night. The feathers were plucked and the carcasses fried the following morning, dried in the sun, and transported to the city to be sold on the market. The Sara people use standing fishing nets with a very fine mesh, while Masa and Musgum fishermen cast nets over groups of birds. The impact of hunting on the quelea population (about 200 million individuals in the Lake Chad Basin) is deemed insignificant. Woven traps made from star grass ("Cynodon nlemfuensis") are used to catch hundreds of these birds daily in the Kondoa District, Tanzania. Guano is
Red-billed quelea from northern and central Sudan and central Ethiopia in May and June, to breed in southern Sudan, South Sudan, southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, moving back north from August to October. In southern Africa, the total population of the subspecies "Q. quelea lathamii" in October converges on the Zimbabwean Highveld. In November, part of the population migrates to the northwest to northwestern Angola, while the remainder migrates to the southeast to southern Mozambique and eastern South-Africa, but no proof has been found that these migration cohorts are genetically or morphologically divergent. The red-billed quelea is regarded as the most numerous