Birders in the metropolitan New Delhi area are frantically searching for a black-necked stork that was recently photographed with a plastic cap stuck on its beak, the man who took the photo said Saturday.

Manoj Nair, an amateur photographer who is a member of the Delhi Bird Photography Facebook Page, snapped the photo on Thursday evening while in a wetland popular with birders.

(Photo courtesy of Manoj Nair)

"When I was birding, the day before yesterday, I saw a black-necked stork struggling to remove the bottle cap from its beak in Basai Wetland, Haryana," Nair told Kyodo News.

The bird was last spotted Friday morning at the same wetland, but flew away towards a southwest district of the capital before it could be captured.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the black-necked stork has been placed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

"If we can't find it soon, it will die of thirst and hunger," Pankaj Gupta, a senior birder from the Delhi Bird Foundation, told a local newspaper. "It's a race against time."

Tons of plastic bottles are dumped next to the Basai Wetland, which is a popular area for migratory and common birds from different part of the world.

The incident comes just days after India hosted World Environment Day, which this year had the theme of "Beat Plastic Pollution."

(Photo courtesy of Manoj Nair)