Huge flocks of Quela Quela birds have descended on rice and maize fields two months before a crucial harvest in the northern states of Zamfara and Yobe, which border Niger on southern edge of the arid Sahel semi-desert, a region already facing looming food shortages and rising prices.

"There is actually an outbreak of Quela birds in Bakura, Maradun and Mafara districts which has destroyed most of the rice fields that were almost ripe for harvest," said Zamfara information commissioner Mohammad Aliyu Moriki.

"They have done colossal damage to the rice fields including the state governor's farm in his home town of Bakura where 80 percent of the rice has been eaten up by the birds," he told AFP in a telephone interview.

In recent years northern Nigeria has been spared the worst of the destruction visited on crops in neighbouring Niger by drought and locusts, and has even been able to send some food aid to help out in the crisis there.

But the arrival of large numbers of Quela Quela right on the Niger border will increase fears that the eastern Sahel region is far from being out of danger. Agricultural officials in nearby Benin said they had no reports of the birds, but were on the look-out.

The Quela Quela, also known as the Red-billed quelea (Quelea quelea), is the world's most abundant bird species which can travel in flocks several hundred thousand or even millions strong and poses a devastating threat to crops.

They fly in densely packed and highly coordinated flocks and when they roost at night their numbers can be so great that they break thick tree branches.

Moriki said Nigeria's federal government had chartered a plane to spray the birds with pesticides but had so far been unable to control them.

"Our fear is that if the pests are not controlled at this stage they will do more damage by spreading and destroying other crops that will be due for harvest in two months," he added.

Meanwhile in nearby Yobe State, which also borders on a drought hit region of Niger, Agriculture Commissioner Mairo Amshi said spraying had also commenced there in three districts in order to combat the Quela Quela birds.

A Yobe State official said increasingly numbers of refugees from Niger had begun crossing the border into Nigeria with their livestock to escape hunger.

Years of drought and last year's locust invasion have wiped out crops in much of Niger and in areas of Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, leaving several million people at risk of starvation.

The UN World Food Programme says that in Niger alone 3.6 million people are directly affected by food shortages -- with 2.5 million of those "in urgent need of food aid" -- and the British charity Oxfam has called for a billion dollars to be spent on an emergency programme.

An international aid operation has begun.

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