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Updated: July 15, 2025
Sun-birds rival the flashing colors of the humming-birds in the jungle openings; king-fishers of large size and brilliant blue plumage make the river banks gay; shrieking paroquets with coral-colored beaks and tender green feathers, abound in the forests; great, heavy-billed hornbills hop cumbrously from branch to branch, rivaling in their awkward gait the rhinoceros hornbills; the Javanese peacock, with its gorgeous tail and neck covered with iridescent green feathers instead of blue ones, moves majestically along the jungle tracks, together with the ocellated pheasant, the handsome and high-couraged jungle cock, and the glorious Argus pheasant, a bird of twilight and night, with "a hundred eyes" on each feather of its stately tail.
The hornbills, however, like the eagles, and many other rapacious birds, though not otherwise of a very amiable disposition, are true to the sacred ties of matrimony. So said Saloo, though not in this exact phraseology. "But what if the ould cock shud get killed?" suggested Murtagh. "Supposin' any accident was to prevint him from returnin' to the nest? Wud the hen have to stay there an' starve?"
Several species of hornbills dwell in the forests at the foot of the Himalayas, but only one species is likely to be found at elevations above 5000 feet. This is the rufous-necked hornbill. Aceros nepalensis. The rufous-necked hornbill. In this species the casque or excrescence on the upper mandible is very slight. It is a large bird 4 feet long, with a tail of 18 inches and a beak of 8½ inches.
"Better that you now go and hunt birds." The boy then decided to hunt. He climbed a tree and put up snares to catch birds. He caught a great many big hornbills, which he fastened alive to his loin cloth, and they began to fly, carrying the boy with them to a big tree, where they loosened themselves from him, left him in a cleft, and all flew away.
"No fear about Nub," observed the mate. "I hope that he may soon wring the necks of the hornbills and send them down to us." Nub was now near the hole where the female hornbill had been seen. She had drawn in her head; and her mate was either absent from home or was concealed among the thick foliage at the top of the tree.
In the next family, the Bee-eaters, is another equally isolated bird, Meropogon forsteni, which combines the characters of African and Indian Bee-eaters, and whose only near ally, Meropogon breweri, was discovered by M. Du Chaillu in West Africa! The two Celebes Hornbills have no close allies in those which abound in the surrounding countries.
For in fact this power is but a very incidental result of the general intelligence of parrots, combined with the other peculiarities of their social life and forestine character. Dominant woodland animals, indeed, like monkeys, parrots, toucans, and hornbills, at least if vegetarian in their habits, are almost always gregarious, noisy, mischievous, and imitative.
They had been waiting for Nub, who had gone out early in the morning; but just as they were starting, they met him coming back with a couple of hornbills, which had taken refuge in the hole occupied by the birds before captured. "I thought oders would come," he observed, holding them up; "and I got one egg, too, which do nicely for Missie Alice's breakfast."
Mr Sedgwick was highly delighted with his prize. He had always wished to get one of these birds; but had failed to find them, though he had seen them at a distance, and therefore knew that they were in the island. He was aware of this habit of the male bird of plastering up his mate with her egg, and bringing her food while it was being hatched. Several other hornbills act in the same way.
Meanwhile Dermot and his mammoth companions were climbing steadily higher and ever higher into the mountains. A panther, disturbed by them in his sleep beside the bones of a goat, rose growling from the ground and slunk sullenly away. A pair of brilliantly-plumaged hornbills flew overhead with a loud and measured beat of wings. Kalej pheasants scuttled away among the bushes.
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