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-headed quelea science for the first time by Gustav Hartlaub in 1848, who named it "Ploceus erythrops". In 1951, Hans von Boetticher regarded the cardinal quelea and red-headed quelea sufficiently different from the red-billed quelea to create a new genus "Queleopsis". The species epithet "erythrops" derives from the Greek word ἐρυθρός (eruthros), meaning "red" and ὄψ (ops) meaning "eye" or "face", referring to the rufous or red face. Ludwig Reichenbach gave the species its first English name in 1863: red-headed dioch. Other vernacular names in the English language include pokerhead, and red-headed weaver. Its vernacular name in Swahili is "kwelea kichwa-chekundu". Based