Hornbill

“ Owing to the weight of the beak, the hornbill is in danger of toppling over, head foremost, as it alights on a branch, and assuredly would sometimes do so but for the long tail which serves to balance the great beak. So vigorously does the hornbill have to flap its wings during flight that the sound of the air rushing through them can be heard for nearly half a mile in the case of the largest species. ”

“ The hornbill is lively and active, leaping from bough to bough with great lightness, and appearing not to be in the least incommoded by its huge beak. Its flight is laborious, and when in the air the bird has a habit of clattering its great mandibles together, which together with the noise of the wings produces a weird sound. The food of the hornbill seems to consist of both animal and vegetable matters. We take our illustration from Wood's "Natural History."
Saw Tempering by Natural Gas. ”

“ Saloo did not descend immediately, but once more thrust his hand into the nest, hoping, no doubt, to find an egg or eggs in it. Instead of these, the contents proved to be a bird—and only one—a chick recently hatched, about the size of a squab-pigeon, and fat as a fed ortolan. Unlike the progeny of the megapodes, hatched in the hot sand, the infant hornbill was without the semblance of a feather upon its skin, which was all over of a green, yellowish hue. ”

“ The majority of species of hornbill shun the vicinity of human beings. They are accordingly to be found only in the Terai and other great forest tracts. The grey hornbill, on the contrary, shows no fear of man. Although strictly arboreal in its habits, it occurs in those parts of the country that are not thickly wooded. A grove of trees is all that it demands. Grey hornbills are birds of the highway and the village. Usually they go about in small flocks.
Lophoceros birostris is particularly abundant in the sub-Himalayan districts of the United Provinces. ”

“ In no case does she depend on him absolutely, even during this season, 6save in that of the hornbill, where the female, sitting on her nest in a hollow tree, is walled in with clay by the male, so that only her beak projects; and then he feeds her while the eggs are developing. But even the female hornbill does not expect to be fed at any other time. ”

“ It was here I first met with the African Grey Hornbill, Tockus nasutus, a bird, strange to say, which became rather common in the gardens of Pretoria during the winter months of 1896. Hornbills are not averse to human habitations, and I had brought to me the yellow- and red-billed species, Lophoceros leucomelas and L. erythrorynchus, both killed in town gardens. ”

“ The queerest-looking bird of all, perhaps, was the ground hornbill, which is as common about African villages as a crow. This bird looks as if it had been trying to imitate the rhinoceros, for it has a great horny bill with a thick lump on what might be called the bridge of the nose. It is useful to the villager, for it is a sort of street cleaner in feathers, and eats garbage, rats, snakes, lizards, and other small creatures, with great relish. ”

“ The hornbill is also frugivorous, and the natives assert that when endeavouring to detach a fruit, if the stem is too tough to be severed by his mandibles, he flings himself off the branch so as to add the weight of his body to the pressure of his beak. ”

“ It is from these women, in Washington, New York, and elsewhere, that the loudest appeal for the hornbill standard of domesticity proceeds. Put them to the test, and give them their chicken-salad and champagne through a hole in the wall only, and see how they like it.
But even the most honest and peaceful conservatives will one day admit that the hornbill is not the highest model. Plato thought that "the soul of our grandame might haply inhabit the body of a bird;" but Nature has kindly provided various types of bird-households to suit all varieties of taste. ”

“ The only corroboration his perverted view receives is afforded by the observed fact that hornbills, in captivity at any rate, never have any fat about them. ↑ In The Malay Archipelago (i. 213) , Wallace describes a nestling hornbill (B. bicornis) which he obtained as “a most curious object, as large as a pigeon, but without a particle of plumage on any part of it. ”

“ The Hornbill of Malacca111 assures the protection of its nest and of the female while she is brooding in a singular manner. She lays in the hollow of a tree; as soon as she begins to sit on her eggs, the male closes the opening with diluted clay, only leaving a hole through which the captive can pass her beak to receive the fruits which he brings her in abundance. ”

“ But situated as they were, with an angry elephant besieging them in the tree, and now for a while interested in observing the movements of the bird itself, Karl was in no humour to deliver an ornithological lecture. He might have told them that ornithologists have differed much about the classification of the hornbill—some of them placing it among the toucans, while others assert that it belongs to the crow family. Its immense beak—out of all proportion to its body—is not the only point of resemblance it bears to the toucans. ”

“ The male hornbill has the same habit, and a concave hornbill in the gardens "will frequently throw up grapes, and, holding them in the point of the bill, will throw them into the mouth of the keeper if he is not on the alert to prevent or avoid this distinguished mark of its kindness." ”

“ Every cavity in the trees is now inhabited, and woodpeckers, barbets, and parrots are constantly at work making new chambers, or widening and adapting already existing cavities into brooding-holes, while the hornbills, on the other hand, busy themselves plastering up the too-wide entrances. The last-named birds are specially distinctive in their brooding habits, and deserve to be mentioned first.
When the hornbill by ardent wooing has won a mate, he helps her to seek out a suitable hole to serve as a nest. ”

“ Among the African species the details vary, but the nest is usually located in a hole in a tree, and except in the case of the ground hornbill the entrance is plastered up so that only a narrow slit is left, about wide enough for the passage of the bird's bill. The female takes an active part in the walling up of the opening, and might be said to wall herself in. When the opening to be filled in is wide, the male may bring earth, which he mixes with saliva in his gullet, and presents to the female, who does the actual plastering. In some species the walling up of the entrance may take months. ”

“ A grotesque hornbill sat in a tree near, gasping under the heat, as these birds do, occasionally opening its huge bill, crying “toc-toc,” in a curious yelping tone, opening its wings restlessly as if for air, and lowering its head. In a bush, on the left hand, a beautiful crimson-breasted shrike occasionally uttered a clear ringing note. Two hundred yards away, a scattered troop of wild guinea-fowl, returning to the last remaining pool in the now parched and sandy river-bed, after a day of digging for bulbs in the woodlands, were calling to one another, with harsh metallic notes, “Come back! ”

“ Some birds have what seem to be very curious habits at the nesting time. The jealous-hearted Hornbill of the Old World never trusts his spouse to wander away from the nest after her duties there once begin. In order that he may always know just where she is he quite willingly undertakes to supply her with all her food during the days while the incubation of the eggs is going forward. With mud he daubs up the entrance to the hollow in the tree where she is sitting, leaving only a small opening through which food may be passed. ”

“ When all preparations have been made, the female enters the nest hole, and does not emerge until some weeks later, when the eggs have been hatched and the young are ready to fly. Having entered the nest, the hen hornbill proceeds to reduce the size of the orifice by which she gained access to the nest cavity, by plastering it up with her ordure until the aperture is no more than a mere slit, only just large enough to enable her to insert her beak through it. Thus, during the whole period of incubation and brooding she is entirely dependent on the cock for food. ”

“ We were fortunate enough to secure a series of fourteen specimens of this rare hornbill from Sulu and Tawi Tawi. The tail is pure white; all other parts black, the feathers of the back and wings glossed with dark green. The bill in adult birds is coal-black; all of our adult males had the iris nearly white, while in the adult females it was dark brown; legs and feet dull leaden, nails black. Young birds have the tip of the bill white or pale horn. ”

“ Its plumage is dirty white, with the exception of the ends of the wing feathers, which are shabby black. Its shape is displeasing to the eye, and its gait is an ungainly waddle. Yet even this fowl looks almost beautiful as it sails on outstretched pinions, high in the heaven. Between the extremely beautiful and the extremely ugly birds we meet with another class of superlatives—the extremely grotesque. This class is well represented in India. The great hornbill—Dichoceros bicornis—and the adjutant—Leptoptilus dubius—are birds which would take prizes in any exhibition of oddities. ”

“ In many of their habits, so far as these are known, all hornbills seem to be much alike, and though the modification in the form of the beak, and the presence or absence of the extraordinary excrescence, [2] whence their name is derived, causes great diversity of aspect among them, the possession of prominent eyelashes (not a common feature in birds) produces a uniformity of expression which makes it impossible to mistake any member of the family. ”

“ Lophoceros birostris is a bird nearly two feet in length. The prevailing hue of the plumage is greyish brown. The bill, which is four inches long, and the casque are blackish. Like the other members of this peculiar family, the grey hornbill possesses [88] eyelashes, which increase the strangeness of its appearance. This species is found in most parts of the plains of India, except the Malabar coast, where it is replaced by Lophoceros griseus. The grey hornbill of Ceylon is the species L. gingalensis. ”

“ Nor can the exigencies of protection have evolved the glaring colors of the West Indian hornbill. The toco (toucan) , as the Cubans call the yellow-billed species, can be descried from a distance of two hundred yards, and is, indeed, not anxious to be admired at close range. Old specimens get as wary as mountain ravens, but, like
The Smallest Bird. ”

“ They could perceive none. Not the slightest appearance to indicate its intention of departing from the spot.
While engaged in regarding the besieger, their eyes were of course removed from the sycamore; nor might they have been again turned towards that tree—at least, not for a good while—but for a sound that reached their ears, and which appeared to proceed from the direction of the hornbill’s nest. It was a soft and rather plaintive sound—unlike any that had been made by the rhinoceros bird ”

“ THE hornbills, which are as large as big eagles, are some of the most extraordinary and bizarre of all birds, not only on account of the huge beaks from which they take their name, but from their strange and unique nesting-habits. In the enormous development of the beak these Old World birds are paralleled by the toucans of tropical America, although the two groups are in nowise nearly related. Such a huge and apparently unnecessary structure might at first sight seem too heavy and bulky for the bird by which it is carried ”

“ Hornbills are social birds, keeping in companies, not to say flocks, and living chiefly on fruits and seeds; but the bigger species also capture and devour a large number of snakes, while the smaller are great destroyers of insects. The older writers say that they eat carrion, but further evidence to that effect is required before the statement can be believed. Almost every morsel of food that is picked up is tossed into the air, and then caught in the bill before it is swallowed. ”

“ The hornbills would, at all events, afford them an ample meal for that day, and they might reasonably expect to obtain a further supply of shell-fish from the seashore; though Nub might not succeed in finding another huge mollusc.
“Shall we remove the ladder?” asked Walter. “It might help to build the house.”
“I tink not,” answered Nub, looking up. “Perhaps anoder hornbill come and make her nest dere, den we catch her and her husband. Bery good chance of dat, I tink.” ”

“ Hornbills often build their nests in the trunks or branches of trees. When searching for their nests it is a common sight to see the young birds peeping out of a snug nest almost hidden inside the hollow of an old branch. ”

“ Swainson thinks may prove to be a link between Toucans and Hornbills, and thus combine the beauty of plumage of the former with the peculiarity of form of the latter. Their flesh is delicate, especially when fed on aromatic seeds. Many species are described, varying in size, among which the Rhinoceros Hornbill is the most worthy of notice. This bird is so named from the singular protuberance with which its bill is surmounted; this is a smooth horny helmet, curving upwards from the bill, somewhat resembling the horn of the rhinoceros. It is a native of India and the islands of the Indian Ocean. ”

“ Like other Hornbills, it is a true tree-bird, and but rarely descends to the ground, except when the supply of fruit and berries upon which it principally subsists falls short. Certain trees are usually selected as favourite resting-places, and upon them it perches with the utmost regularity, taking possession of the highest branches, upon which it sways itself to and fro, varying the entertainment from time to time by hopping clumsily from bough to bough. ”