A Chase @ Bhadra

Stories from Bhadra continues...

On a morning safari in Bhadra, we started the safari from river tern island asusual. We saw lot of river terns catching fish, feeding their young ones, few small pratincoles were also there with their chicks, and we spent some time there watching them.

After a while, we started from there, and suddenly we could see a huge flock of river terns flying all in one direction. It was an unusual sighting, and then we noticed – a huge bird was flying among the river terns. Again?! Actually, the huge bird was not flying among the river terns, but being chased by the river terns.

We thought - "is that the Bonelli's eagle hunting again?" No. It was a Woolly Necked Stork!!

I never expected a Stork playing predatory role. I have seen in TV channels about some Storks in Africa are predators, but never expected to see in real. Actually, I am not sure if the Stork was trying to pick a young river tern. What else could be the reason for hundreds on river terns chasing a single stork? May be someone could correct me here. For me, it didn't look like a territorial conflict.

The chase continued, and the scene was like somebody had thrown a stone over a bee-hive and all the bees are chasing. We were moving away from the island and the birds vanished behind the island. Silence again.

Though we were far away from the island, I kept looking at the island, wondering what just had happened. As I was watching, suddenly, there was huge agitation again in the island. The Woolly necked stork came back again and sat on the rock floor in the island. Not sure, if it got a river tern chick. The amount of agitation was crazy. Hundreds and hundreds of river terns were mobbing the stork, but the stork looked determined. It didn't look tired or injured, but was there in the island, till the scene completely vanished from my view. Not sure what happened later.

An amazing drame witnessed - Woolly necked stork, River terns and the chase.