A purple heron that was struggling to remove a dead snake coiled around its neck was rescued from Rajarajeshwarinagar lake on Tuesday.
A volunteer of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau rescued the bird after passers-by noticed the bird struggling and alerted the BBMP forest cell.
Prasanna Kumar, the volunteer, managed to remove the snake, whose head was stuck inside the bird’s beak, after an hour-long effort. Soon after the snake was removed, the bird collapsed. But after a few minutes, it got up and flew away.
“The bird may have tried to catch the snake but the reptile got stuck in the long, sharp beak of the heron. In an effort to wriggle out of the bird’s grasp, the snake circled around its neck and died later. Unable to remove the snake, the bird moved around the lake the whole night and was probably exhausted,” Mr. Prasanna Kumar said.
