Anhinga melanogaster
Silhouette: Emily Willoughby · PhyloPic
In 3 days >90%
The Oriental darter (Anhinga melanogaster) is a water bird of tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia. It has a long and slender neck with a straight, pointed bill and, like the cormorant, it hunts for fish while its body is submerged in water. It spears a fish underwater, bringing it above the surface, tossing and juggling it before swallowing the fish head first. The body remains submerged as it swims, and the slender neck alone is visible above the water, which accounts for the colloquial name of snakebird. Like the cormorants, it has wettable feathers and it is often found perched on a rock or branch with its wings held open to dry.
The Oriental darter is like all other anhingas, a cormorant-like species that has a very long neck. The structure of the neck is as in other species of darter with strongly developed muscles about a kink in the neck at the 8th and 9th vertebrae that allows it to be flexed and darted forward with rapid force to stab fish underwater. The edges of the commissures of the mandible tips have minute inward pointing serrations that hold impaled fish.
The adult plumage is black. The crown and neck are ideally bole (though often whitish or even... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thiruvananthapuram | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Coimbatore | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 3 | Jakarta | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 4 | Ponnani | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 5 | Kochi | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Semarang | 🇮🇩 Indonesia | |
| 7 | Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] | 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka | |
| 8 | Mysuru | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 9 | Savar | 🇧🇩 Bangladesh | |
| 10 | Visakhapatnam | 🇮🇳 India |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens | 🇻🇳 Vietnam | |
| 2 | Bali Bird Park | 🇮🇩 Indonesia |
Very likely
About 70% of wildlife watchers report an Oriental Darter sighting in Wilpattu National Park on a given day, based on 383 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 10th most-seen of the 169 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May and October–November
In those months about 80% of wildlife watchers report an Oriental Darter in Wilpattu National Park on a given day, against about 50% in August, the lowest month. Those are among Wilpattu National Park's wettest months, with about 250 mm of rain a month against 40 mm in February.
Between 3 and 6 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Oriental Darter sightings with a recorded time, and about 6 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is most active around dawn and dusk.
3rd of 29
Of the 29 parks where we can rate Oriental Darter sightings, Wilpattu National Park ranks 3rd at about 70%. The best odds are in Kaziranga National Park (India, about 80%) and Keoladeo National Park (India, about 80%). All parks ranked.
Same order: Suliformes
The closest relatives of the Oriental Darter that you can see in Wilpattu National Park (order Suliformes, Gannets, Cormorants, and Allies) are Little Cormorant (about 60%), Indian Cormorant (about 30%) and Great Cormorant (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Oriental Darter is recorded against all the birds logged in Wilpattu National Park (383 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.
