Great blue turacos (Corythaeola cristata) often came to feed on fruit from the same trees as hornbills. These perches were on the periphery of the tree, where the branches were about an inch in diameter.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 5
Even when she was sitting on my lap, her head was thrown back, like a wild bird lying in our garden. One was the jingle of a slightly open bill in the opening of the mud wall.
NEST CONSTRUCTION
Similar cries were heard from another female whose mate fed her relatively rarely early in the breeding season, and from another female whose mate had recently been killed.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 9
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM II
The two birds now perched together on the edge of the wood, while he coughed and transferred 5 or 6 balls to his partner's account.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM I3
There was a touch of bills and it mishandled as if he was trying to give her a few extra pills but apparently he had none to give. After he flew away, I investigated the site, which turned out to be a low termite mound. Although hornbills seemed to be particularly attracted to termite nests, they are not always so.
Nest-building.—At different times I have seen four pairs of terns building the walls of their nests. Three couples worked in the morning and one pair, from the Botanical Gardens, in the late afternoon. He bent over the nest opening as he picked up pea-sized pellets of soil.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 15
She entered the nest several times, started tapping and flew out again after a short time. Another indication of the strength of the walls was given during the time of natural nest openings. Half of the entrance cement of two nests (3 and 12) was completely washed away, apparently by the hatching female.
They were approximately 4 inches long, 3 inches in width and thickness, and were constructed in concentric layers. The faeces did not appear to be an integral part of the main structure of the cement.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 1
ACTIVITIES OF NESTING PAIRS
This male, like most others I observed, did not remain in the nest tree after a feeding visit. On December 8th he flashed over the jack and threw his card down at the entrance 23 times to offer a piece of bark. More often he would take small pieces with his bill and throw them out quickly and systematically.
Ek, |-\'iiiaK- iKiiiiliill by nege ^lu.• \\a- rcniDwed from nes lo, approximate twD-tliirds of the wav tlir(Higli nesting period.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM I9
EGGS, YOUNG, AND NEST OPENINGS
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS KILHAM 21
She was not shy in captivity, but remained motionless, as if stunned, and refused to eat. It was clear that this female, seen when she was about one-third, and again two-thirds through the nesting period, had not experienced sudden or complete molting. The mother bird strove hard, striking the African who gave him a sharp blow to the chin, so that he fell backwards.
Her plumage appeared to be complete, except that her tail feathers, although well grown, had sheaths at the base. Mpanga Forest on the afternoon of January i, I heard the wailing of a hornbill in distress. The female in the nest continued to scream in a very pitiful manner for the next 2 hours, but her mate failed to return.
I suspected that the hornbill had been knocked from its perch by a bird of prey and, after falling straight to the ground, had been plucked on the spot. A new pair inspected the nest and it was clear that the original female was no longer there.
NO, 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 23
At that moment, an invading female hornbill attacked the young one and the two fell to the ground wrestling. Their young lay flat on the road, but soon flew onto the lawn and then into a low tree. I was hesitant to remove the young bird, but it was clear that any passing dog or person could kill it.
Parental Devotion.— No Greater Hornbill has visited our garden regularly since the departure of the roosting pair in October. However, from April 1st to May 15th, when we left, a pair of pronghorns arrived every day, often remaining hairy for some time. It was the one I watched for 4 months in a botanic garden 3 miles away.
TERRITORY, AND RELATIONS OF HORNBILLS WITH ONE ANOTHER
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS KILHAM 25
The female flew to the entrance and clung to the lower edge for support with her extended tail. Then she pecked hard against the mud wall and clung to the tip of the female's beak in the nest. In 10 minutes, the intruder attacked the nest entrance 12 times, but did not.
Since this episode occurred early in the nesting period, I suspected that the estranged pair might not have found a suitable nest site. Then he either gave it to the nesting female or let it fall into her nest. The female rattled her beak at the strange male. Ten minutes later, the alien female swung dramatically on a long tangle of epiphytic roots, then landed on the edge of the nest.
At noon on November 28, the male from nest 7 flew in and poked his beak into the opening. The nesting female blared her beak and screamed several times, but her mate paid no attention to the intruder during feeding visits.
28 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I3I ladders and an African was preparing to climb up and open the nest
RELATIONS WITH OTHER BIRDS
FOOD
On December 6. a male went from one low perch to another among our garden trees, .. flying up from the foot of a jacaranda with a 5-inch lizard squirming in its beak. He flew to a perch over a native shamba .. the lizard that had been around in his beak for some time, as he caught it at the tip of the . tail, then chewed until he reached the head. In a feat of acrobatics, the hornbill .. dropped down behind its prey, disappearing from sight into the vegetation.
A completely. limp lizard hanging on to his beak as he flew over the hill in what I assumed was the direction of his nest. After a few minutes he flew to a thick bushy tree, where he carefully examined the leaves, and then hopped directly to the tip of a branch where a mousebird had its nest. The hornbill picked up an egg with the tip of its bill, flung it back into its gullet with a toss of its head, and then did the same with a second egg.
The male coughed up one egg from his gullet and held it back in the tip of his bill. He flew to her, still holding the egg, and sat down beside her and gave her the egg; then pulled up and handed her the other, both intact.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 3I
REMAINS OF INSECTS RECOVERED FROM FECES BELOW HORNBILL NEST 5 Dicranorrhina micans (Drury)
The hornbills made a flapping noise as they snapped at the passing termites and were at the game for over a few minutes. Compact swarms of small insects (not seaflies) hovered in the tops of tall trees next to the Institute Compound.
SOME ANATOMICAL FEATURES IN RELATION TO FUNCTION Some peculiarities of hornbill anatomy came to have more signifi-
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS KILHAM 33
DISCUSSION OF FACTORS CONTROLLING HORNBILL POPULATIONS
NO, 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 35
COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF OTHER HORNBILLS Genus Tockus. — There were two other species of hornbills in the
The bird was still missing the outermost secondaries and the innermost primes, but the others were there, most of them more or less still in their cocoons. From November onwards, I had observed several horned grasshoppers in the Botanic Gardens and observed a squirrel hole 50 meters up in a nearby tree. The investigations of Gordon Ranger (1949-52) provide the opportunity to compare the habits of Bycanistes with those of Tockus in some.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 37 another crowned hornbill (Tockus alboterminattts) which occurs in
34; its dexterity in retrieving an object that falls from its beak before it reaches the ground by diving." Speaking of a captive bird, he writes that "Conkie was adept at catching objects thrown at her at intervals of many yards ." male hornbill-. Ranger wrote of the crowned hornbill as follows: "The meaning of the exaggerated scraping of the billagainstabranch, which is more particularly allowed by them, has not become clear.". , but basking is.
Conkie assumed the most limp, lifeless, unbird-like position, with neck curled and throat up, eyes hidden by the relaxed third eyelid. Such poses are the same as those of my pethornbill, Zika. For example, he wrote about the following behavior that had occurred 26 days earlier. last entry. The male then delivered a bid and resumed hunting the intruder.” This male then delivered “13 pieces of food and bark, but was constantly concerned about the young intruder who followed him back to the nest again and again.
Ground hornbills. – I only had passing views of the huge ground hornbills in Karamoja and Murchison Falls National Park. The natives in the Kenya Colony have a story that involves the female hornbill saying, "boom boom, I'm going home; boom, I'm going home" and the male counterparts saying, "yoxah might say that; boom, you're saying that maybe; I" I'm tired of hearing it; go home; boom boom." It was therefore with great interest that I learned from Mr. Rudyerd Boulton that the natives of Angola have a different interpretation of the calling of these birds.
DISCUSSION OF HORNBILL BIOLOGY
In East Africa, they are protected as scavengers and are not attacked by big game hunters and settlers. Like all hornbills, these birds feed by picking up bits of food with their beaks, then tossing it into the air and catching it far down in their beaks or even in their open mouths as it descends.
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 4I
In young birds, the feathers at the base of the upper jaw are brown instead of black. Moreau (1936) found that copulation took place in Bycanistes hrevis just after the female had emerged from her morning work and about 10 days before the nest wall was completed. Pitman (personal communication, 1955) believed that the nest hole that I saw in the Botanic Gardens had been used in 1947 and in 1949.
This not only makes more room for the little ones, but enables her to help with the feeding. But, as indicated by white matter in the feces, they may have had more animal protein, especially in the form of smaller insects, than I realized. At one nest, the same female apparently stayed around for months, possibly attacking and crippling the young soon after it left the nest.
First, invading females may have been offspring of the previous season, unwilling to leave their parents, or second, they may have been unmated adults attracted to an apparently solitary male; possibly they fell into both categories. Some of them seemed more attracted to the nest itself and others to the male who came and went with him as he made his feeding visits.
SUMMARY
NO. 9 CASQUED HORNBILLS — KILHAM 45
