New Delhi - Scores of Buddhist villagers in India's north-eastern state of Assam performed a unique funeral ritual for more than 800 endangered storks that died after a tree where they were nesting fell, a news report said Monday.

The Asian openbill storks died when the 200-year-old banyan tree that served as their colony crashed last week into a pond inside a Buddhist monastery some 300 kilometres east of state capital Guwahati, the IANS news agency reported.

The villagers, most of them farmers, considered the banyan tree sacred and believed that the storks were their guardian angels.

"Five monks led the special funeral prayers at the monastery Sunday as the incident of the banyan tree crashing and the subsequent deaths of so many storks is considered a bad omen," Dibyadhar Shyam, a villager, told the IANS.

The prayers continued for about two hours, with monks chanting hymns and performing special rites to ward off any evil following the incident.

The banyan tree was home to about 1,500 storks of the species listed as endangered under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, the report said.

The global population of these storks is estimated at 130,000 and the village had one of the largest colonies of the storks in Assam.

The Asian openbill stork is a broad-winged soaring bird and is found mainly in India and Sri Lanka and some South-east Asian countries like Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Wildlife experts and ornithologists have praised the villagers for their concern for the endangered storks.

"The way the villagers responded to the deaths of the storks by informing the wildlife authorities and the concern for the birds is indeed a heartening thing at a time when people are less worried about protecting endangered species," A Goswami, a wildlife warden, told the news agency. (dpa)