Hornbills
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Hornbills (family (biology) 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.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
Sub-Species:
- Abyssinian Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus): The Abyssinian Ground-hornbill, also known as Northern Ground-hornbill, is one of two species of ground-hornbill. The other is the Southern Ground-hornbill. Web Resources:
whozoo.org
- African Grey Hornbill (Tockus nasutus)
- Asian Black Hornbill (Anthracoceros malayanus)
- Bar-pouched Wreathed Hornbill (Aceros undulatus)
- Black Hornbills: Black Hornbill, Anthracoceros malayanus - Rainforest
- Brown Hornbills: Brown Hornbill, Ptilolaemus tickelli - Rainforest
- Bushy-crested Hornbill (Anorrhinus galeritus): Bushy-crested Hornbill, Anorrhinus galeritus - Rainforest
- Crowned Hornbill (Tockus alboterminatus)
- Great Hornbills: Great Hornbill, Buceros bicornis - Rainforest
- Great Indian Pied Hornbill (Buceros bicornis) Great Indian Hornbill (Photo & Article)
- Ground-Hornbills
- Helmeted Hornbill (Buceros vigil)
- Jackson's Hornbill (Tockus deckeni jacksoni)
- Northern Pied Hornbill (Anthracocercos malabaricus)
- Malabar Pied Hornbill (Anthracocercos coronatus)
- Monteiro's Hornbill (Tockus monteiro)
- Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris): Oriental Pied Hornbill, Anthracoceros albirostris - Rainforest (Photos)
- Papuan Wreathed / Blythe's Hornbill (Aceros plicatus)
- Plain-pouched Wreathed Hornbill (Aceros subruficollis): Plain-pounched Hornbill, Rhyticeros subruficollis - Rainforest
- Red-billed Hornbill (Tockus erythrohynchus): Kenyabirds ... Kenyalogy ... Samburu National Park, Kenya ... African World Hornbills Network: African Red-billed Hornbills ... Mangoverde
- Red-knobbed / Island Hornbill (Aceros cassidix)
- Rhinoceros Hornbill (Buceros rhinocerus): Rhinoceros Hornbill, Buceros rhinoceros ... Rhinoceros Hornbill ( Photos of Malaysian stamps that bear this bird's image) - Rainforest
- Rufous-necked Hornbill (Aceros nipalensis): Rufous-necked Hornbill, Aceros nipalensis - Rainforest
- Southern Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri)
- Southern Pied Hornbill
- Tarictic Hornbill (Penelopides ... unknown)
- Tickell's Brown Hornbill (Anorrhinus tickelli)
- Trumpeter Hornbill (Bycanistes bucinator)
- Visayan Tarictic Hornbill (Penelopides panini)
- Von der Decken's Hornbill (Tockus deckeni deckeni)
- White-crowned Hornbill (Aceros comatus): White-crowned Hornbill, Berenicornis comatus - Rainforest
- Wreathed Hornbills: Wreathed Hornbill, Rhyticeros undulatus - Rainforest
- Wrinkled Hornbill (Aceros corrugatus): Wrinkled Hornbill, Rhyticeros corrugatus - Rainforest
- Yellowbilled Hornbills (Tockus flavirostris)
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