Brave bird parents repeatedly divebombed a deadly black mamba to defend their nest.
Dave Pusey was on a tour of Blue Canyon Private Game Reserve, South Africa, when he spotted two frantic Cape starlings darting at an Ana tree.
Dramatic footage shows Africa’s most notorious snake with its head already in the trunk of the tree while the blue birds attack its body.
Despite their best efforts – even leaving marks on the snake’s body – the mamba reappeared from the tree with an obvious lump in its belly where it had clearly fed.
Dave said: “I was amazed at the persistence of the snake despite being so aggressively attacked and bombed by the starlings.
“My thoughts were that the snake hadn't had a meal for a while and we had just come off a long cold winter of reptile inactivity.
“It was my first time to see a black mamba so high up a tree raiding a nest. It was very high, about 10 metres up the Ana tree trunk.
“The attack went on for an hour or so from when I first heard the starlings alarm calling when the snake was just underneath the nest.”
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