The story of the resident Boomslang & the weaver

The African savannah is a hotspot to see all sorts of weaver birds.

Weavers are creative nest builders, who hang their nest upside down, mostly secure enough to protect from predators.

The African savannah is also home to many snakes... Boomslangs are one of them, a large snake, with distinct head and very large eyes with round pupils.  Their colours vary between juvenile and adult male & female. 

We rarely see Boomslangs at Serian Camp, a dangerous but very shy snake that prefers to stay hidden away.

Weavers are already very noisy birds but one day they were really chirping away very loud, this drew the attention of Serian staff and guests around the deck area.

That sunny noon, just after lunch, we had the chance to see a unique hunt. It crawled gently along the branch of the tree, towards the nest, trying to find its way in. It had managed to get past all the angry pecking weavers and slid into the nest - while the rest of his body was wrapped around the nest - to find a scrumptious baby weaver. She swallowed that up inside the nest but decided to go for seconds and in a blink of an eye it struck again... and had the second little weaver betweens its jaws injecting venom into it.

By this stage the counter attack was made by adult weavers, giving the snakes a few nasty pecks, so much as to make the snake come out of the nest with the second baby weaver in-between its jaws.

After a struggle between the Boomslang and several weavers, the snake had to give up and let go of her pray... the little weaver fell down on the path, a few meters below.

All help was too late for the bird, which bled to death, as the venom of the Boomslang, prevented the blood from clotting. The amount of venom injected by the Boomslang was only very small, but so was our little bird.

And although the beautiful snake missed out on his seconds, I couldn’t stop feeling sorry for the little weaver.

Kristel Ottoy

Jan 2011