No not the folk group from the late 1940’s and 1950’s, but a large family of very different birds from Africa. There are over 100 different species of ‘weaver’ bird and I was fortunate to come across 11 of these amazing little birds (approx. 17-25cm) during my visit to Tanzania earlier this year. Here is a montage of nine of them and each individual bird can be seen separately on the Tanzania Gallery. There is no ‘cookie-cutter’ fits all in the world of weavers, they can behave differently, come in different colours and sizes, such as the quite large but fairly nondescript Rufous-tailed Weaver to the much smaller but dazzling Village Weaver and with differing bill sizes and shapes too. The majority of them ‘weave’ a variety of spectacular looking closed basket shaped nests, but a couple of them are ‘parasitic’ in that they are like ‘cuckoos’ and will lay their eggs in the nests of other weavers, doing nothing more they leave them to be incubated and raised by the host birds. The birds seen here (from top left to right) are: Viteline, Grey-capped, Spectacled, Rufous-tailed, Chestnut, Red-billed, Village, Speckle-fronted and Baglefecht weavers.
