Malabar Hornbill
| Malabar Hornbill | ||||||||||
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Male hornbill while feeding |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Anthracoceros coronatus | ||||||||||
| ( Boddaert , 1783) |
The hornbill ( Anthracoceros coronatus ) is a species of bird in the hornbill family that occurs in South Asia.
The population situation of the Malabar hornbird was classified in the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species in 2016 as “ Near Threatened (NT) ”.
description
The hornbill reaches a body length of up to 65 centimeters. The beak in the male reaches a length of 17.1 to 22.1 centimeters. In females, the beak remains slightly smaller at 15.4 to 18.9 centimeters.
Characteristics of the male
The male's head, neck, front chest, back and wings are black and have a blue-green tinge. The lower chest, thighs, abdomen and under wing coverts are white. The wings are white with a black base except for the two outer ones. The tail is predominantly white, only the middle pair of tail feathers is black and protrudes over the other control feathers by 2.5 to 4 centimeters. The outer control springs have individually different black markings, which, however, are always smaller than the white portion of these springs.
The beak horn is very large and has an ax-like shape. It starts above the forehead and ends before the tip of the beak. The horn is cream to yellow with an extensive black spot in front of the end, in the male there is also a black spot at the beginning of the beaked horn. The extent of the black spot at the end of the horn varies from person to person and increases with age. The slightly curved beak, on the other hand, is yellow to dark horn-colored. There is a black spot at the base of the beak.
The featherless skin around the eye is black and blue, while the bare throat patch is flesh-colored. The eyelids are black. The eyes are red to orange-red, the legs and feet are gray-green.
Features of the female and young birds
The females are similar to the males in terms of body plumage, but are slightly smaller overall. However, the size ratio between the beak horn and beak is the same as that of the male. However, the beak horn of the female does not show any black coloring at the beginning of the horn. Usually the black spot at the end of the horn is also somewhat smaller. The featherless skin around the eye is white, the throat patch is flesh-colored, the eyes are brown.
The body plumage of the young birds is similar to that of the adult, but their control feathers often have more black parts than that of the nobility. The beak is much smaller, the beak horn not yet developed. The bare skin of the face is colored according to gender, the eyes are gray-brown.
Distribution area and habitat
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The hornbill occurs in three different populations in South Asia.
A large distribution area extends in the east of India over the Indian states of Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. A second population lives on the west side of the Indian subcontinent. There the distribution area extends from the foothills of the Western Ghats over Goa, the west of the district of Mysore and Tamil Nadu and Kerala. A third population lives in Sri Lanka.
The hornbill populates the fringes of moist evergreen and deciduous forests. It is also found in the sparse forests of the foothills and also colonizes bamboo forests, plantations and groves with fig and mango trees. In the extreme south of its range, it is absent in the high altitudes where the double hornbill occurs. In Sri Lanka, it occurs mainly in the forests of the lowlands. In some regions its range overlaps with the oriental hornbill .
Way of life
The Malabar hornbird's way of life has been studied particularly intensively in the Indian Western Ghats , a mountain range in western India that runs along the edge of the Deccan Plateau and separates it from the narrow strip of the coastal plain and the Arabian Sea . The north of the Western Ghats is somewhat drier than the south, reaches somewhat lower heights and has teak trees and species of the Dipterocarpaceae as important flora species . Above 1000 m height, the main evergreen representatives of the Lauraceae family dominate . The evergreen Wayanad Forests of Kerala and Tamil Nadu form the transition region between the northern and southern ecoregions of the Western Ghats. The southern ecoregions are generally more humid and species-rich. At low altitudes, the main tree species are Cullenia , Teak and Dipterocarpaceae.
The hornbill occurs there in groups of four to 58 individuals and is mainly found in mixed forests at altitudes of 300 to 600 meters. They mainly gather where trees bear fruit. The Malabar hornbills come together at common overnight spots and prefer branches that protrude over a body of water. In the investigated area, some of the nocturnal resting places have been used for decades. The number of individuals who gathered at the communal roost was particularly low during the breeding season. Only non-breeding adult birds and not yet sexually mature birds gathered at these resting places.
The Malabar hornbills leave their nocturnal resting places immediately after sunrise, individually, in pairs or in small flocks of up to three birds. They return to their resting places at dusk. They usually land at the top of the summit and then hop down on the preferred resting branch.
food
The hornbill mostly eats fruit, but also eats animal food if the choice of fruit is limited. Figs are one of the very important food crops, they also eat the stone fruits of Gervais tilliifolia , peanuts , Polyalthia fragrans , Polyalthia longifolia , Schleichera oleosa , Machalus macrantha and the like. They consume animal protein in the form of snails, beetles, butterfly larvae, grasshoppers, crickets, lizards and termites. They also seem to occasionally eat eggs from other bird species. They never drink, but are able to meet their fluid needs through their food. The high proportion that figs make up in their diet may be related to this.
Diet
Malabar hornbills search for food in small flocks, larger gatherings only occur on trees that are rich in fruit. The distance they travel from their resting places to their feeding grounds varies with the season. In the summer months, when they mainly eat the fruits of peanuts and figs, the distance covered is between 0.4 and 4 kilometers. In the winter months, however, it can be up to six kilometers.
They usually only look for food in the treetops, only to get smaller amounts of animal protein they come to the ground. They do not eat fruit that has fallen on the ground. They pick fruits directly from the branches, they also fly up to get to fruits that they cannot otherwise reach. Larger fruits such as the fleshy berry fruits, which can sometimes be thick-walled, also break them with the beak.
Reproduction
The reproduction of the Malabar hornbird has not yet been conclusively investigated. However, the total duration of the reproductive cycle is estimated to be eighty days, of which 29 to 30 days are spent in the breeding season and 49 days in the nestling season. In Sri Lanka, the breeding season falls in the wall from April to July, in western India it falls in the months of March and April.
Hornbills use natural tree hollows as nesting holes at a height of 3.5 to 15 meters above the ground. As is typical for hornbills, the female seals the breeding cavity from the inside except for a narrow gap and is then supplied with food by the male. During the weeks that she spends in the nesting cavity, the female does a great feathered moult.
The female always leaves the nest box before the young birds, but the exact point in time seems variable to time. A female was observed leaving the brood cavity when the nestlings were only between 10 and 14 days old. More typical, however, seems to be that the female leaves the nest cavity one to two weeks before the young birds fledglings. As with other hornbills, the nestlings seem to close the breeding cavity after the female has left.
Existence and endangerment
It is a common bird in parts of its range. Population declines are mainly due to habitat loss. In Sri Lanka it has meanwhile been pushed back to some more isolated regions and is nowhere near as common as it was until 1980. In the Indian state of Orissa , the birds were hunted down so intensively that a breeding program was initiated there in 1992.
literature
- W. Grummt , H. Strehlow (Ed.): Zoo animal keeping birds. Verlag Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-8171-1636-2 .
- Alan Kemp: The Hornbills - Bucerotiformes . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995, ISBN 0-19-857729-X .
Web links
- Anthracoceros coronatus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2012. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2012. Accessed October 23, 2016th
- Calls of the Malabarnhorn bird on Xeno-Canto
Single receipts
- ↑ Anthracoceros coronatus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2016 Posted by: BirdLife International, 2016. Retrieved on 3 October 2017th
- ↑ a b c Kemp: The Hornbills - Bucerotiformes . P. 161.
- ↑ a b c Kemp: The Hornbills - Bucerotiformes . P. 162.
- ↑ a b c Kemp: The Hornbills - Bucerotiformes . P. 164.
- ↑ a b Kemp: The Hornbills - Bucerotiformes . P. 163.