About the Painted Stork
The Painted Stork is one of India's most visually spectacular waterbirds — a large, boldly patterned stork with pink-tinged wing feathers, a yellow bill, and bare orange-red facial skin that makes it unmistakeable. It is a predominantly resident species of wetlands, marshes, and floodplains across the Indian subcontinent, particularly common in the lakes and reservoirs of peninsular India and the Gangetic plain.
Painted Storks are highly colonial nesters — thousands of pairs nest together in trees at traditional colony sites, creating extraordinary spectacles of noise, movement, and smell. Keoladeo National Park (Bharatpur) in Rajasthan hosts one of the world's most famous waterbird nesting colonies, where painted storks, open-billed storks, night herons, purple herons, spoonbills, and cormorants all nest together in the same trees. The species faces threats from drainage of wetlands, disturbance of colony sites, and collision with power lines.