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Kingfisher Bites Off More Than He Can Chew With Ferocious Snake

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These astonishing pictures capture the dramatic battle between a kingfisher and a snake that it tried to eat for its dinner.

The plucky bird tried its luck by diving into the water to grab the snake - but the serpent fought back and grabbed the bird around the neck.

A battle between the two then took place - and photographer Nitin Jain caught the whole thing on camera.

He was admiring the wildlife in Pune, India, at the time when he suddenly caught sight of the kingfisher struggling under water.

He revealed: “Suddenly the kingfisher appeared from the water.

“I was shocked to see it was clashing with a snake.”

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The minute-long battle between the pair shows the snake, which Nitin believes to be a keelback, thrashing out of the water, grabbing the bird round the neck and pulling it under the water multiple times.

It was looking like the kingfisher had taken its last breath but in an apparent final use of its remaining energy it managed to break free from the snake’s grasp and fly off to safety.

Fleeing to a nearby tree, the kingfisher remained still for the next two hours, taking time to recover from his shock battle.

Nitin added: “I was photographing herons, egrets, and cormorants, I was not at all expecting such action to happen.

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“I felt very lucky to witness something like this.

“I have been photographing kingfishers for many years now, but have never seen such behaviour.

“This is very unusual, I checked the Internet after photographing this, but could not find anything similar.

“I went to the same place at least 20 more times but such thing did not happen again.”

The kingfisher no doubt stayed away from snakes after his near-deadly encounter.

Pictures courtesy of Caters/Nitin Jain