Red-billed quelea in colour, sometimes with some dark spots. Some clutches contain six eggs, but large clutches may be the result of other females dumping an egg in a stranger's nest. Both sexes share the incubation of the eggs during the day, but the female alone does so during the cool night, and feeds during the day when air temperatures are high enough to sustain the development of the embryo. The breeding cycle of the red-billed quelea is one of the shortest known in any bird. Incubation takes nine or ten days. After the chicks hatch, they are fed for some days
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