Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris)
Order: CORACIIFORMES
Family: BUCEROTIDAE Hornbills
Scientific name: Anthracoceros albirostris
English name: Oriental Pied Hornbill
Characteristic: Size 70 cm. A large black bird with white patches at cheeks, wing tips and tail tip, and on belly. Bill is remarkably large, yellow in colour, with a characteristic casque on the top. A female is smaller than a male.
Distribution: India, Southern China, Indo-China and SE Asia.
Habitat: Dry evergreen forest and dipterocarp forest.
Habit: Keeps primarily to undisturbed, primary forest; wandering in group about isolated crowns of forest trees. Food comprises wild fruits and other small animals. Breeding between April-May. A pair will utilize a hight tree hollow as a nesting site, in which a clutch of 2-3 eggs will be laid. While incubating its eggs, a female bird is imprisoned in that hollow,leaving a vertical slit as a feeding hole. Through this hole a father will provide food for both a mother and nestlings, also they will eject out their faecal sacs. As soon as the young hatch out, a mother will break open the cementing covering, and laterly seal it op.
Status: A Common resident elsewhere, but already extirpated from Sakaerat area long times ago.
