This was the terrifying moment a rescuer was forced to put his hand inside a birdcage to pull out birds as a deadly cobra was lurking inside.
Satyaranjan Mohapatra of Banki in eastern India was alerted by his pet birds, which were fluttering wings desperately and chirping loudly.
When he checked the cage he saw that a cobra had sneaked in through a gap and killed three of his budgerigar birds.
A two-member team from Snake Helpline, Lalit Mohan Panda and Durga Madhab Mohapatra, were called to the house.
They found that the cobra had taken refuge inside an earthen pot where the birds had laid a few eggs.
They prodded the cobra gently with a snake hook to come out of the cage, but every time the cobra poked its head out, the birds would peck it immediately, forcing it to retreat.
Lalit said: "The birds were attacking the cobra seemingly to protect their eggs.
As the mothers put up a ferocious fight, the cobra was clearly on the defensive.
There were four eggs in one pot and three in another." As the cobra was also trying to attack the birds, Durga, one of the rescuers, put his right hand inside the cage and slowly removed the three birds one by one.
Meanwhile Lalit, the second rescuer, restrained the cobra with his snake hook and kept it inside the pot.
As soon as the birds were removed, the cobra came out of the pot on its own and was captured easily.
It was released in a natural habitat away from the village.
Subhendu Mallik, General Secretary of Snake Helpline, said: "The surviving birds had been attacking the cobra so ferociously it didn’t dare to leave the pot.
It was so stressed, it had even regurgitated the birds it had swallowed.” The footage was filmed on July 23.