Red-billed quelea sound due to the many wing beats. After arriving at the roost or nest site, birds keep moving around and make a lot of noise for about half an hour before settling in. Both males and females call. The male sings in short bursts, starting with some chatter, followed by a warbling "tweedle-toodle-tweedle". The red-billed quelea is mostly found in tropical and subtropical areas with a seasonal semi-arid climate, resulting in dry thornbush grassland, including the Sahel, and its distribution covers most of sub-Saharan Africa. It avoids forests, however, including miombo woodlands and rain forests such as those in central
Red-billed quelea quelea needs of precipitation to breed, with nest building usually commencing four to nine weeks after the onset of the rains. Nests are usually built in stands of thorny trees such as umbrella thorn acacia ("Vachellia tortilis"), blackthorn ("Senegalia mellifera") and sicklebush ("Dichrostachys cinerea"), but sometimes in sugar cane fields or reeds. Colonies can consist of millions of nests, in densities of 30,000 per ha (12,000 per acre). Over 6000 nests in a single tree have been counted. At Malilangwe in Zimbabwe one colony was long and wide. In southern Africa, suitable branches are stripped of leaves a few days