Frank De Souza, a 53-year-old technician, caught this footage on camera in Marloth Park on 14 November 2016, while hiking with his wife and a small group. Frank told Latest Sightings that this “was the first time [he] had ever seen a bird fighting a snake”.
They spotted the bird, which Frank identified as a grey-headed bush-shrike, on their bird watching trail and observed it “on the dirt road jumping around and flying up and down”.
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After spotting the bird, the group “saw a snake not far off”, but the bird saw it too. Frank and his group identified the reptile as a southern vine snake and watched as the shrike and the snake joined together in a deadly war.
Each Other’s Potential Meal
Grey-headed bush shrikes often feed on snakes as part of their diet, meanwhile, vine snakes frequently eat birds and small mammals. This meant both animals were fighting for their lives, and it could have ended badly for either of them.
Vine snakes rely on their stealth abilities to ambush their prey, and this camouflage is so good that this shrike was lucky to have spotted it in the bush.
Aerial Warfare
It quickly became clear that the bird had an advantage. Although the snake camouflaged well with the dry sticks scattered around the battlefield, it couldn’t hide after the bird locked onto it.
There was nowhere to take shelter from the shrike’s dive bombing tactics, and the snake couldn’t strike back when the bird could quickly retreat into the air.
The snake seemed to give up on the fight quite quickly, but it just couldn’t slither away fast enough from the angry shrike, which kept targeting its head.
Deceptive Tactics
Seemingly aware that it would never be able to outrun the shrike, the snake turned to using different tactics to escape. Playing dead is a tried and tested method in the animal kingdom of getting out of sticky situations.
Playing dead often causes the aggressor to lower its guard for long enough that an opportunity to make a quick escape might emerge. In this case, the shrike does seem to lose a bit of interest in the snake once it stops fighting back.
Despite backing off a little, the bird didn’t give the snake enough of an opportunity to get away, as Frank said, the “bird was not so easily fooled and the fighting then continued”.
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To The Death
With the snake’s attempt to escape having failed, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before the shrike was enjoying itself with a nice meal. Frank mentioned the presence of another snake, which attempted the same tactic, but this bird was not going to accept such an outcome.
He said that when the second snake played dead, the bird “kept pulling the snake around, and we left”. The first snake managed to escape, but the second seemed unlikely to be so lucky, and the bird was emerging victorious.