Bird Photography · The Indian List
Storks
1 of 9 species photographed
Storks are wetland birds built at a scale that makes everything around them look provisional. They wade slowly, they fly with the neck extended and the legs trailing, and they spend a great deal of the day doing nothing much at all — standing on a bank in a loose line, digesting. That patience is what makes them approachable, and it is also what makes them difficult: a stork that has decided to stand still will out-wait you.
The reward for staying is that they are gregarious, so the frame is rarely one bird. A group on a mudflat gives you overlapping shapes, and when something puts them up, the whole line goes at once — a lot of black and white and pink opening simultaneously. That take-off is the picture worth having, and it comes without warning.
Nine species reach India, and the group carries some of the country's most serious conservation stories. The Greater Adjutant came within sight of disappearing before a recovery effort in Assam pulled it back. Black-necked Stork and Lesser Adjutant are both scarce and thinning.
9Species in India
1Photographed
Wetland marginsWhere to look
Neck out, legs backHow they fly
The take-offWhat to wait for
The species
African Openbill
Not yet foundBlack Stork
Not yet foundAsian Woolly-necked Stork
Yet to uploadWhite Stork
Not yet foundBlack-necked Stork
Not yet foundLesser Adjutant
Not yet foundGreater Adjutant
Not yet foundPainted Stork
Mycteria leucocephala5 frames- Status
- Resident
- Range
- Widespread across the plains wherever there are large shallow wetlands
- Habitat
- Shallow freshwater — tanks, jheels, reservoir margins, flooded fields
- IUCN
- Near Threatened
Unmistakable at any age: white body crossed by a black breast band, black-and-white barred wing coverts, and a rose-pink flush across the tertials that intensifies in breeding condition. The bare orange face and heavy decurved yellow bill are visible at long range. Feeds by sweeping the open bill through shallow water and snapping shut on contact, so it works with its head down and its eyes elsewhere.
FM0099
Pulicat Lake, Thiruvallur, Tamil NaduFeeding — the open bill swept through shallow water, head down.
Photographs by Fareed Mohmed