Does the stork bring home the owl? Dusky Eagle‐Owls Bubo coromandus breeding on Woolly‐necked Stork Ciconia episcopus nests

We documented nests built by Woolly‐necked Storks, a large waterbird, being preferentially reused by Dusky Eagle‐Owls, a large raptor, with nest sites located close to irrigation canals in Haryana, India. This novel commensal relationship observed in an agricultural landscape underscores the need to expand tropical ecology investigations to outside of protected forested reserves. Large raptors frequently reuse nests of other species, but their reliance on nests of largely one species is unusual. In this natural history note, we describe a novel commensal relationship where nests built by Woolly‐necked Storks were preferentially reused by Dusky Eagle‐owls. Owls showed distinct patterns of preference for both the nest tree species and the location of the nest tree relative to storks’ choices. These observations were made in an ancient cultivated landscape suggesting that novel inter‐species interactions may evolve even in extensively human‐modified tropical systems.