The Malabar Pied Hornbill is a medium-sized hornbill, considerably bigger than the rather more widespread Oriental Pied Hornbill.
It’s distributed in three separate geographic areas, two in India and one in Sri Lanka, the place the photographs on this put up have been taken in March 2025.
The species is listed as Close to Threatened, with the primary threats being habitat loss and poaching (in India). Nonetheless, a change (to Least Concern) has been proposed (supply) because the inhabitants dimension is estimated to be above 10,000, and the decline in numbers is lower than 20%. Appears a bit careless to search out these numbers even vaguely comforting, however then once more, there isn’t any level in “specializing in all the things” (as a advisor, I typically instructed my shoppers that in the event that they inform me to deal with two or three issues, I’ll do it. In the event that they inform me to deal with twenty or thirty issues, I’ll simply deal with no matter I feel is finest. Finish of non-advertisement for my consulting companies).
Nonetheless, one paper studies a drastic decline in a single area in India.
As well as, amongst all hornbill species, it’s notably threatened by local weather change – one paper predicts that its vary will contract by 69%.
In India, the Tamil Nadu authorities has due to this fact launched a hornbill conservation initiative to guard the habitat of 4 threatened hornbill species within the Western Ghats, with a selected deal with the Malabar Pied Hornbill (supply).
It primarily feeds on fruit, notably figs – see right here for an old-fashioned-looking report with specifics.
This makes them necessary components of entire ecosystems – with their giant payments and physique dimension, hornbills such because the Malabar Pied Hornbill can eat and disperse large-sized seeds (supply).
The male typically feeds the feminine even when stated feminine will not be enclosed in a treehole throughout breeding (see right here for info on most well-liked nesting bushes).
Distinguishing the 2 sexes is easy – the one within the KISS cowl band is the feminine (white eye masks). The feminine can be smaller.
Maybe probably the most intriguing, although considerably sparse, paper on the Malabar Pied Hornbill is one on it pursuing social play (or “potential social play”, because the cautious researchers name it). They noticed the next:
“Among the many sorts of social play behaviour noticed throughout this research, probably the most fascinating and attention-grabbing commentary was a attribute flight show together with the locking of payments. These hornbills have been noticed to fly out of the pre-roost tree, one after one other, carry out a mid-air acrobatic twirl and lock their payments collectively. This passed off instantly above the center of the river and because the birds have been free-falling in mid-air, they’d all of a sudden break off and fly again to the pre-roost gathering tree or in two totally different instructions.”
