This saddle billed stork has plenty of justification for being cross! It spends ages sifting through muddy water in search of a meal. It spends so long, in fact, that the video has to be speeded up (x4) so that we don’t get bored. Finally, it manages to grab hold of a good-sized fish in it’s beak. As it tries to re-position the fish so that it can swallow it, the unthinkable happens! The stork momentarily drops the fish and at that very moment an aptly named African fish eagle swoops in from the left (feet first), grasps the fish from the water and makes off with it. What a cheek!
What Do We Know About Saddle Billed Storks?
Saddle billed storks have a typical stork physique. They are tall and graceful with long legs and a long beak. Their weight is a maximum of around 16 pounds and in the wild they live around 12 years.
This attractive bird is a resident of tropical Africa south of the Sahara and their preferred habitats are open or semi-arid country but they must be near water. As a diurnal animal, they sleep at night and spend their day foraging for food. This is done in water so you will find them in shallow parts of rivers and lakes but also on flood plains and swamps.
This stork gives a perfect demonstration of how they look for food – standing in the water and stabbing repeatedly with their long beak and trying to stir up prey with their feet. They are looking for fish mainly but also eat frogs, small reptiles and even small mammals. These are large birds and can be up to four feet 11 inches tall.
These storks swallow fish whole and this is what the bird in the clip is trying to do!
©Tomas Drahos/Shutterstock.com
African Fish Eagles as Thieves!
African fish eagles are magnificent birds that can reach nearly eight pounds in weight and a wingspan of up to eight feet. They have been nicknamed ‘the voice of Africa’ thanks to their loud distinctive call. These birds also like to live near bodies of water and their main food source – which is fish.
Their feet are perfectly designed for grasping a slippery fish – powerful talons with rough soles. These guys are also notorious food thieves. The scientific name for this is kleptoparasitism and can be very annoying for the victim – as this stork found out.
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