The balaeniceps is met with only in or near water, but it prefers marshes to rivers.  It is abundant upon the banks of the Nile only during the hot season which precedes the rains and when the entire interior is dried up.  During the rest of the year it inhabits natural ponds and swamps, where the shallow water covers vast areas and presents numerous small islands, of easier access than the banks of the Nile, which always slope more or less abruptly into deep water.  In such localities it is met with in pairs or in flocks of a hundred or more, seeking its food with tireless energy, or else standing immovable upon one leg, the neck curved and the head resting upon the shoulder.  When disturbed, the birds fly just above the surface of the water and stop at a short distance.  But when they are startled by the firing of a gun, they ascend to a great height, fly around in a circle and hover for a short time, and then descend upon the loftiest trees, where they remain until the enemy has gone.

Water turtles, fish, frogs and lizards form the basis of their food.  According to Petherick, they do not disdain dead animals, whose carcasses they disembowel with their powerful hooked beak.  They pass the night upon the ground, upon trees and upon high rocks.  As regards nest-making and egg-laying, opinions are most contradictory.  According to Verreaux, the balaeniceps builds its nest of earth, vegetable debris, reeds, grass, etc., upon large trees.  The female lays two eggs similar to those of the adjutant.  It is quite difficult to reconcile this opinion with that of Petherick, who expresses himself as follows:  “The balaeniceps lays in July and August, and chooses for that purpose the tall reeds or grasses that border the water or some small and slightly elevated island.  They dig a hole in the ground, and the female deposits her eggs therein.  I have found as many as twelve eggs in the same nest.”

The whale-headed stork is still so little known that there is nothing in these contradictions that ought to surprise us.  Authors are no more in accord on the subject of the affinities of this strange bird.  Gould claims that it presents the closest affinities with the pelican and is the wading type of the Pelicanidae.  Verreaux believes that its nearest relative is the adjutant, whose ways it has, and that it represents in this group what the boatbill represents in the heron genus.  Bonaparte regards it as intermediate between the pelican and the boatbill.  If we listen to Reinhurdt, we must place it, not alongside of the boatbill, but alongside of the African genus Scopus.  The boatbill, says he, is merely a heron provided with a singular bill, which has but little analogy with that of the balaeniceps, and not a true resemblance.  The nostrils differ in form and position in those two birds, and in the boatbill there exists beneath the lower mandible a dilatable pouch that we do not find in the balaeniceps.  An osteological examination leads Parker to place the balaeniceps near the boatbill, and the present classification is based upon that opinion.  The family of Ardeidae is, therefore, divided into five sub-families, the three last of which each comprises a single genus.