Ciconia episcopus
Silhouette: L. Shyamal · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~80% in a week >90%
The Asian woolly-necked stork or Asian woollyneck (Ciconia episcopus) is a species of large wading bird in the stork family Ciconiidae. It breeds singly, or in small loose colonies. It is distributed in a wide variety of habitats including marshes in forests, agricultural areas, and freshwater wetlands across Asia.
The woolly-necked stork was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected from the Coromandel Coast of India. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Ardea episcopus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The woolly-necked stork is now placed in the genus Ciconia that was erected by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The genus name Ciconia is the Latin word for a "stork"; the specific epithet episcopus... Wikipedia →
Aberrant0:22
India · 2025
© Sreekumar Chirukandoth · XC1068686 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kaziranga National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Wilpattu National Park | 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka | |
| 3 | Royal Bardia National Park | 🇳🇵 Nepal | |
| 4 | Ranthambore National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 5 | Keoladeo National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Minneriya National Park | 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka | |
| 7 | Satpura National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 8 | Udawalawe National Park | 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka | |
| 9 | Chitwan National Park | 🇳🇵 Nepal | |
| 10 | Yala National Park | 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka | |
| 11 | Mudumalai National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 12 | Bandhavgarh National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 13 | Nagarhole National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 14 | Periyar National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 15 | Gir National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 16 | Bandipur National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 17 | Cat Tien National Park | 🇻🇳 Vietnam | |
| 18 | Jim Corbett National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 19 | Bali Barat National Park | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 20 | Sinharaja Forest Reserve | 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka | |
| 21 | Kanha National Park | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 22 | Manas National Park | 🇮🇳 India |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ponnani | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Agra | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 3 | Thrissur | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 4 | Bhopal | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 5 | Kota | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 7 | Kalyan-Dombivli | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 8 | Vasai-Virar | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 9 | Solapur | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 10 | Kozhikode | 🇮🇳 India |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Planckendael Zoo | 🇧🇪 Belgium | |
| 2 | Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens | 🇻🇳 Vietnam | |
| 3 | Bandung Zoo | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 4 | Tier- und Freizeitpark Thüle | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 5 | Thrissur Zoo | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Rákosův pavilon | 🇨🇿 Czechia | |
| 7 | Mořský svět | 🇨🇿 Czechia | |
| 8 | Wolfgang-Köhler-Primaten-Forschungszentrum | 🇩🇪 Germany |
Likely
About 40% of wildlife watchers report an Asian Woolly-necked Stork sighting in Royal Bardia National Park on a given day, based on 142 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 30th most-seen of the 233 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 80%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
November to January
In those months about 50% of wildlife watchers report an Asian Woolly-necked Stork in Royal Bardia National Park on a given day, against about 30% in February and May–July, the lowest months. Those are among Royal Bardia National Park's driest months, with about 15 mm of rain a month against 590 mm in July. August has too few records to rate.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Asian Woolly-necked Stork sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
3rd of 22
Of the 22 parks where we can rate Asian Woolly-necked Stork sightings, Royal Bardia National Park ranks 3rd at about 40%. The best odds are in Kaziranga National Park (India, about 60%) and Wilpattu National Park (Sri Lanka, about 60%). All parks ranked.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Asian Woolly-necked Stork is recorded against all the birds logged in Royal Bardia National Park (142 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
