Beijing: A looming locust outbreak on the Chinese side of the Sino-Kazakhstan border has been thwarted, thanks to nearly one million locust-devouring birds and massive aerial spraying of pesticide, local officials said.

Local government has been building nests for two years to attract birds, mainly starlings that love eating locusts, to Tacheng and Altay counties, where the locust plague has always been the worst, an official with northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region's office of locust and mouse control said.

Every 300 starlings can protect one hectare of grassland from locusts, Xinhua news agency quoted the official as saying.

The starlings were also helped by an army of chickens and ducks raised by local farmers with government subsidies, for the particular purpose of locust devouring.

A duck could consume up to 400 locusts a day, local people say. Xinjiang is one of the regions that suffers most from locusts in China, with nearly five million acres of pasture being plagued every year, while the area near in the Sino-Kazakhstan border has always been the hatching bed of the locust swarms.

By July six this year, locusts had invaded and damaged pastures totalling 3.58 million acres, according to the official estimate. The birds have been instrumental in preventing locust outbreak, the locust control office said.