Great hornbill

Great hornbills love figs!

They pick fruit with the tip of their beak. Sometimes they eat insects, lizards and other small animals too.

Great hornbills eat mostly fruit, and figs most of all: figs make up most of the fruit they eat all year. They also eat other fruits, plus insects, eggs, frogs, lizards, small mammals and small birds.

Hornbills use the tip of their bill like fingers to pluck fruit. When they swallow fruit and drop the seeds far away, they help new trees grow. Where hornbills are hunted, fewer seeds get spread.

The IUCN notes that figs (Ficus) make up a major part of the diet, alongside drupes of the Annonaceae and Lauraceae and arillate capsular fruits of the Meliaceae and Myristicaceae; animal prey includes eggs, amphibians, reptiles, insects, mammals and small birds. Animal Diversity Web reports great hornbills defending fig trees against other birds such as wreathed hornbills.

As large frugivores they are important seed dispersers. Studies cited by the IUCN found that the decline of hornbills in hunted and logged forests reduces seed dispersal. On Langkawi, groups of at least 150 have gathered at fruiting strangler figs.

Great hornbills are noisy birds.

They call loudly to each other. Their big wings make a whooshing sound when they fly.

You often hear a hornbill before you see it. Its broad wings make a loud, rhythmic whooshing sound in flight, which can be heard far away, and its calls range from deep booms to loud brays and bellows.

Pairs call to each other in duets: the male calls and the female answers. Outside the nesting season, great hornbills travel widely to find fruiting trees, sometimes in big groups. Hornbills are active by day and spend time preening each other and resting between meals.

Hornbill wingbeats produce a rhythmic chuffing audible at long range, and calls range from deep booms to brays and bellows (San Diego Zoo). Animal Diversity Web describes duetting in mated pairs, with male and female alternating calls.

Social behavior shifts with the season. During nesting, pairs stay within small home ranges of about 0.7 to 7 square kilometers, because the sealed female depends on the male; afterward, birds range over areas recorded at 138 square kilometers in Thailand and about 50 in northeast India (IUCN). Large gatherings form at fruiting trees, and casque-butting and bill-grabbing have been seen in groups in Malaysia.

Great hornbills need big old trees for their nests.

When forests are cut down, they lose their homes. People now guard hornbill nests to keep them safe.

The great hornbill is vulnerable, which means it is at risk. Its forests are being cut down for timber, farms and towns, and it needs huge areas of forest with very big trees. Some people also hunt it for its meat, its casque and its tail feathers.

There is good news too. In Thailand and India, people pay to "adopt" a hornbill nest, and the money pays local nest guardians who watch and protect the nests. Nest boxes have also helped in some places.

The IUCN (2020) lists the species as Vulnerable: restricted to large tracts of undisturbed forest in a region of rapid deforestation, with hunting adding to the decline. Forest loss within its range was estimated at 26 percent over three generations (2000–2012 analysis). Because it revisits the same feeding sites and nest cavities, it is easy to hunt, for food, casques and tail feathers, and chicks are taken for the pet trade.

It is on CITES Appendix I. Hornbill Nest Adoption Programs in southern Thailand (since 1994) and next to Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh, India (since 2011) fund nest guardians, and artificial nest boxes have had some success in Thailand and southern India.