Wheat fields, flooding, snakes and storks

The setting of winter in the northern Indian landscape signals a major change in the crops. After harvesting the rice, farmers plant mustard and wheat. Unlike the rice, that requires to be flooded, wheat needs the soil to be just wet. Farmers achieve this by flooding the fields intermittently. This sets off an unanticipated set of events. Mice and snakes in burrows recently dried out are forced out again and again.

Large waterbirds in Uttar Pradesh seem to have figured this circumstance out - to their benefit. In this set of photographs, I share our observations of a Woolly-necked Stork successfully dispatching a keelback. 

We missed seeing how the stork actually caught the snake, but the photo below shows the bird with the struggling snake, shaking it violently. As we watched, the snake became visibly weaker and nearly stopped attempting to escape altogether. 

 A Woolly-necked Stork with its catch of the morning - a keelback - in a wheat field.

The stork picked up the weakly struggling snake, carried it over to a drier spot near the dike and began beating the head with its beak. The photo below shows the snake - that is hopefully dead by now - with its bloodied head.

  

The bloodied and hopefully dead keelback awaiting the swallow.

Storks swallow snakes headfirst, and whole. This is easier said than done when the snake is a mite bigger than the usual small prey items that storks swallow. The photos below, that took well over a couple of minutes, show the difficult process.

Head-first is how storks like to swallow snakes.

The biggish keelback presented a bit of a problem to the Woolly-necked Stork, but it managed.

In the keelback went, and the serious swallowing began!

After a few minutes, many many swallows later, the snake completely disappeared visible only as a bulge in the stork's neck (above).

Though a snake being swallowed by a stork is pretty commonplace, given that snakes are commonly taken prey by these birds, what we watched represented much more. Human habits (planting wheat and intermittently flooding them), animals attracted by crops (rats in burrows, that in turn attracted snakes), and other wild species (here, a Woolly-necked Stork) all came together to make for a memorable viewing. 

(Photos information: Taken in Etawah district, Uttar Pradesh; taken on 5 Jan 2013.)

Body language

Cranes have among the largest non-vocal communication repertoires in the animal kingdom. Body language is exceedingly important. Here are a few Sarusy gestures that other cranes would know the meaning of instantly.

Wing half-open, an exaggerated walk with legs raised higher than usual, this crane walks up very meaningfully to another Sarus that had landed uncomfortably close to an active nest. The interloper got the message rather quickly!

Crane employ a large number of threat postures increasingly aggressive in their meaning. This female (right extreme) gives a classic ruffle-threat combined with a bow to the pair adjacent to her territory while her partner engages them at closer quarters.

This rare bow-threat is carried out with elan and grace successfully dissuading a pair flying overhead from landing in this crane's territory.

Cranes' large body size and incredible physical prowess poses a great risk of physical injury should they need to joust physically each time a disagreement occurs. Non-vocal postures with specific meaning, like the three above, are a safer alternative for all concerned.

(Photographs information: Top: 10 Jul 2008, Mainpuri district; middle: 28 Nov 2008, Etawah district; bottom: 07 Sep 2009, Farrukhabad district.)

Waterbird foods: Black-necked Stork

Despite their large size and declining population, Black-necked Storks have received relatively little scientific attention. The most prominent study is that carried out by Gopinathan Maheswaran in the managed lakes in Dudwa Tiger Reserve in northern Uttar Pradesh. The storks there were seen to eat fish as their major food.

The unmanaged wetlands amid agricultural fields in western Uttar Pradesh have the largest known population of this species. Here, observations show that fish is not likely their major food - frogs (and reptiles) are! The photographs above show (from top) newly fledged juveniles have already learnt to catch frogs, snails sometimes figure in the diet of juveniles, and large bull frogs make for a great meal and are literally beaten to death by adults before they are swallowed.

(Photo information: top: 21 Jan 2009, Etawah district; middle: 7 Apr 2009, Etawah district; bottom: 12 Apr 2009, Etawah district. I put together all the observations I had made over the years of food items that Black-necked Storks ate, and now have a note in the journal Forktail in case you are really interested.)