Buffalo weaver - female

the female birds have speckled brown plumage rather than the black of the males. Red-billed Buffalo weavers are noisy, gregarious birds who build large apartment blocks from twigs. They like to use twigs with spiny branches such as Leadwood (Combretum imberbe, which helps hold the nest structures together but can be a plague if the nest happens to be above a footpath (or above one's garden gate) as the birds frequently drop/discard(?) twigs.