Red-headed quelea Red-headed quelea The red-headed quelea ("Quelea erythrops") is a species of bird in the Ploceidae family. It is found in Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The red-headed quelea was collected by Carl Weiss on Sao Tome island in 1847, and after its arrival at the Hamburg Museum described for
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