The head, neck, back, wings, and tail are iridescent black, with the rest of the body and the primary flight feathers being white.

Like most storks, they fly with the neck outstretched, not retracted like a heron; in flight, the large heavy bill is kept drooping somewhat below belly height, giving these birds a distinctive appearance.

It has been suggested that due to the large size and unusual appearance in flight, this species is the basis for the "big bird" and kongamato cryptids.

[3] Some of these trends may, however, be due to a bias in coverage by ornithologists of safer areas such as national parks and protected swamps that afford easier accessibility and comforts.

It builds a large, deep stick nest in a tree, laying one to five (typically two or three)[11] white eggs weighing about 146 g (5.1 oz) each.

[15] Saddle-billed storks opportunistically catch other prey such as frogs, snails, small mammals, birds, snakes, and insects such as grasshoppers, termites, and water beetles.

[14] In an unusual case, the saddle-billed stork killed and consumed a red-billed Duck (Anas erythrorhyncha) and a spitting cobra (Naja mossambica).

This bird is represented in an Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph (Gardiner G29) that had the phonetic value "bꜣ": [16] Its description is often erroneously given as "jabiru", which is a South American relative.

), and trends in depictions have been useful to deduce a decline in the species' range from ancient Egypt likely due to intensifying urbanisation and an increasingly arid climate (c. 2686–2181 BC).