Hornbills |
Abyssinian Ground Hornbill
(Bucorvus abyssinicus)
|
Scientific classification |
Kingdom: |
Animalia
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Phylum: |
Chordata
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Class: |
Aves
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Order: |
Coraciiformes
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Family: |
Bucerotidae
Rafinesque, 1815 |
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Genera |
Aceros
Anorrhinus
Anthracoceros
Buceros
Bucorvus
Ceratogymna (=Bycanistes)
Ocyceros
Penelopides
Tockus
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Hornbills (family
Bucerotidae) are a group of
birds whose bill is shaped like a cow's horn, but
without a twist, sometimes with a casque on the upper
mandible. Frequently, the bill is brightly coloured.
Both the common
English and the scientific name of the family refer to the
shape of the bill, "buceros" being "cow horn" in Greek.
The Bucerotidae family includes 57 species, 9 of them
endemic to the southern part of Africa. Their distribution
ranges from Africa south of the Sahara through tropical Asia
to the Philippines and Solomon Islands. Most are arboreal
birds of dense forest, but the large ground hornbills (Bucorvus),
as their name implies, are terrestrial birds of open
savanna.
The female lays up to six white eggs. During incubation,
the female (of all species except the two ground hornbills)
is locked within the
nest cavity by a wall made of mud, droppings and fruit pulp.
There is only one narrow aperture, big enough for the male
to transfer food to the mother and the chicks. During the
incubation period the female undergoes a complete moult. When the chicks and the female are too big to fit
in the nest, the mother breaks out and rebuilds the wall,
then both parents feed the chicks. In some species the
chicks themselves rebuild the wall unaided.
Hornbills are
omnivorous birds, eating fruit, insects and small
animals.
In the
Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, hornbills are separated from the
Coraciiformes, which also includes kingfishers, bee-eaters
and rollers, as a separate order Bucerotiformes.
Some species have different plumages for each sex. The
blue throat of the Abyssinian Ground Hornbill pictured here
shows it to be an adult female.
Most species' casques are very light, containing a good
deal of air space. However, the Helmeted Hornbill has a
solid casque made of a material called hornbill ivory, which
the Chinese valued greatly as a carving material, as did the
Japanese, who often used it to make netsuke.
Red-billed Hornbills
(Tockus erythrorhychus)
Hornbill is also the magazine of the
Bombay Natural History Society. This society's icon is a
Great Indian Hornbill sitting on a branch.
References
- Gordon Lindsay Maclean - Robert's Birds of South
Africa, 6th Edition
External links