The tiny red-billed birds are some of the very many living things that wander around Africa’s plains and that move in a flock as huge as a swarm of bees, they are usually very many that they frightened the elephants despite their size. While the birds made their stop over at a watering hole at the Satao Camp water hole in East Tsavo in Kenya, they scared a way the elephants due to the fact that they crowded around this pair of pachyderms.
These birds are relatively small, harmless but very many enough to scare away elephants. Each of them can be about 10 grammes but the fact that they move in large numbers, they can break a branch once they land on it due to combined weight of them all. Antero Topp a 60 year old photographer was around the areas of Satao Camp water hole when they came to drink water, the same place where the elephants had gone to drink water as well.
He also said that these birds had been some where close feeding and they often gather in large numbers to and head to the water hole to take water and this time, they landed on a big tree and because they were very many, they broke one of the big branches of the tree.
Surprisingly, the elephants had to back away when they came and some had to run away as far as 50metres from the water source fearing those tiny birds. Most probably, the elephants were scared of the numbers and the shape of the flocks as well as the strange whoosh noise they were making while flying. These Red-billed queleas birds are the highest bird species in number around the globe and are estimated to be about 1.5 billion pairs out their in the wild.
