black necked stork

Adult male has black and white plumage. Body is white with glossy black panels above and below white wings. It has short black tail. Head and neck are black, with green and purple gloss. Long, massive, strong bill is black. Eyes are brown. Legs and feet are red. Female is similar to male, but she has yellow eyes. Juvenile has dark to pale brown plumage, and dark legs. It needs several years for getting the black and white adult plumage.

Black-necked Stork lives in wetlands, floodplains of rivers, large shallow marshes, pools, and also in deep permanent bodies of water. We can see sometimes solitary bird straying in open grasslands or wooded areas while it is searching for food.

Black-necked Stork feeds mainly on fish, small crustaceans and amphibians. It hunts by walking along water edged in shallow water. This bird is freshwater forager, eating primarily aquatic animals. But it also consumes reptiles, large insects, turtles, rodents and carrion.

Black-necked Stork utters guttural grunts. We can also hear some dry noises when it clacks and snaps the bill.

The black-necked stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus) is a tall long-necked wading bird in the stork family. It is a resident species across the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia with a disjunct population in Australia. It lives in wetland habitats and near fields of certain crops such as rice and wheat where it forages for a wide range of animal prey. Adult birds of both sexes have a heavy bill and are patterned in white and irridescent blacks but the sexes differ in the colour of the iris with females sporting yellow irises and males having dark-coloured irises. In Australia it is sometimes called a jabiru although that name refers to a stork species found in the Americas. It is one of the few storks that is strongly territorial when feeding and breeding. In India the species is widespread in the west central highlands and northern Gangetic plains extending east into the Assam valley but rare in peninsular India and Sri Lanka. This distinctive stork is an occasional straggler in southern and eastern Pakistan and is a confirmed breeding species in central lowland Nepal. It extends into Southeast Asia through New Guinea and into the northern half of Australia. Compared to other large waterbirds like cranes spoonbills and other species of storks black-necked storks are least abundant in locations that have a high diversity of large waterbird species. The black-necked stork is a large bird 129&ndash150 cm (51&ndash59 in) tall having a 230-centimetre (91 in) wingspan. The only published weight for this species was a single specimen at 4100 g (9.0 lb) but this is nearly 35% less than the mean body mass of the closely related and similar sized saddle-billed stork. Therefore this specimen of black-necked stork could have been at the low end of sizes attainable or perhaps somewhat malnourished. The plumage patterns are conspicuous with younger birds differing from adults. Adults have a glossy bluish-black iridescent head neck secondary flight feathers and tail a coppery-brown crown a bright white back and belly bill black with a slightly concave upper edge and bright red legs. The sexes are identical but the adult female has a yellow iris while the adult male has it brown. Juveniles younger than six months have a brownish iris a distinctly smaller and straighter beak a fluffy appearance brown head neck upper back wings and tail a white belly and dark legs. Juveniles older than six months have a mottled appearance especially on the head and neck where the iridescence is partly developed dark-brown outer primaries white inner primaries that forms a shoulder patch when the wings are closed a heavy beak identical in size to adults but still straighter and dark to pale-pink legs. Like most storks the black-necked stork flies with the neck outstretched not retracted like a heron. In flight it appears spindly and a black bar running through the white wings (the somewhat similar looking migratory black stork has an all black wing) with black neck and tail make it distinctive.