Luzon Hornbill
Penelopides manillae
A fairly large bird of lowland and foothill forest on Luzon and neighboring islands. Small for a hornbill. Bill fairly short with black bands. Has black wings and rump, a black tail with a pale band, and bare skin with a blue tinge around the eye and chin. Male has pale underparts and head with a black cheek, while female is entirely black. The only other hornbill in range is Rufous Hornbill, but Luzon lacks the red bill. Voice is a sharp, medium-pitched nasal honk, reminiscent of a squeaky toy.
Taxonomy
The Luzon hornbill was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Buceros manillae in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The type locality is Manila in the Philippines. The Luzon hornbill is now placed in the genus Penelopides that was introduced in 1849 by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach in a plate of the hornbills. The origin of the generic name is uncertain but it may be a combination of the Latin pene meaning "almost" or "nearly", the Ancient Greek lophos meaning "crest" and -oideēs "resembling". The specific epithet manillae is a Latinized form of "Manila".<p>There are two subspecies: the relatively widespread nominate subspecies, and subniger from the islands of Polillo and Patnanongan. It it sometimes hunted for meat, however a hunting ban is in place against this practice.
- Scientific name
- Penelopides manillae
- Authority
- (Boddaert, 1783)
- Order
- Bucerotiformes
- Family
- Bucerotidae
- Genus
- Penelopides
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
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