Marabou stork

Marabou storks eat dead animals and scraps.

They catch fish, frogs and bugs too.

Marabou storks are scavengers: they eat a lot of dead animals and scraps of fish that people throw away. They also catch live fish, termites, locusts, frogs, lizards, snakes, rats, mice and birds.

They often wait near vultures for leftovers, and hundreds may gather at a rubbish dump. Some may follow herds of large animals to catch the insects they stir up. When they have chicks, they catch small live prey to feed them.

The IUCN gives a diet mainly of carrion and fish scraps thrown away by people, plus live fish, termites, locusts, frogs, lizards, snakes, rats, mice and birds, even adult flamingos (del Hoyo et al. 1992; Brown et al. 1982). Marabous may follow herds of large mammals to catch insects they disturb, and SeaWorld describes them standing on termite mounds to eat swarming insects and gathering at grass fires to catch animals escaping the flames.

Tilgate Zoo notes that they wait near vultures for leftovers, switch to small live prey to feed their young, and gather by the hundreds at rubbish dumps. SeaWorld adds that their powerful bill can open the tough hides of large dead mammals, which lets weaker scavengers feed too.

Marabou storks like to be together.

At night, many of them sleep together in one place.

Marabou storks are sociable. Even when they are not nesting, they often feed in groups, and at night they gather in shared roosts of up to 1,000 birds, sometimes more.

They are drawn to places with food, such as lion kills, plowed fields and rubbish piles. When grass burns, they gather in front of the fire to catch animals running away from it.

Outside the breeding season the species often stays gregarious, feeding in groups and gathering at night in communal roosts of up to 1,000 birds (Hancock et al. 1992), sometimes considerably more (Gula and Pomeroy 2023). SeaWorld lists lion kills, domestic stockyards, plowed fields and rubbish piles as attractions, and describes marabous walking ahead of grass fires to catch fleeing animals; Tilgate Zoo also says they follow fires.

Some have moved into cities. In Kampala, Uganda, marabous first bred in 1968 with 10 pairs; the colony peaked at 1,233 breeding pairs in 2016-2017 and was around 900 pairs in 2021-2022, supported largely by open waste dumps (IUCN, after Pomeroy and Kibuule 2017, 2021).

There are many marabou storks in East Africa.

In West Africa there are far fewer than before.

The marabou stork is listed as least concern, but its numbers are slowly going down. In East Africa there are lots of them, and in some cities their numbers grew quickly. In West Africa, though, there are far fewer than before, and they no longer nest in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali or Nigeria.

There, hunting and illegal trade are thought to have caused much of the decline, and losing the trees they nest in may also harm them.

BirdLife International assessed Leptoptilos crumenifer as Least Concern for the IUCN Red List (assessed 12 September 2024, published 2025): extremely large range, population decreasing slowly, 200,000 to 500,000 individuals (a 2006 expert estimate, still used by Wetlands International in 2024 but highly uncertain); generation length 12.33 years. East and southern Africa, holding most birds, are thought to be largely stable, with big increases where marabous live alongside people.

West Africa has seen rapid declines and range loss, which appear to have been driven by hunting and trade; Nigeria lists it as Endangered under its 2016 Endangered Species Act. In Cameroon, fishers persecute it and chicks have been taken from colonies for food (Scholte 2006); loss of nesting trees to charcoal-making and farmland is suspected in The Gambia (Gula and Barlow 2023). It is Near Threatened in Namibia and South Africa and Vulnerable in Eswatini on national lists. Early in the 20th century, demand for its fine feathers in European fashion made it rare in Uganda.