Painted Stork

This time it is not about my neighbor bird. We got a chance to visit nearest bird sanctuary, there we could find lots of slim, colorful, long wader birds.

Painted storks have very long, yellow bills, it is curved at the end, mostly help them in catching fishes. These birds are about 95-100cm tall, and they breed in colonies. They live near fresh water sources like pond, flooded fields, and marshes etc. They usually build the nest near water and shares its habitat with other stork species like spoon bills, open bills, herons etc.

They usually feed on fish, frog and large insects. Storks keep its head in the water partly opened and keep swinging the head until it catches a prey.

Crocodiles are the main predators of the Painted Storks. In India it is declared in the list of protected species. The scientific name of the bird is "Mycteria leucocephala".