Malabar Pied-Hornbill
Anthracoceros coronatus
A large black-and-white hornbill with a huge bill and casque. The plumage is almost entirely black, but for the white on the belly and the sides of the throat. Sexes are alike, except that the female has a white patch around the eye. In flight, note the white tail with a black tip, and the black wings with a thin white bar in the middle and a thick white edge. It inhabits evergreen and deciduous forests and forest edges. Calls include loud and often maniacal-sounding clucking and braying.
Identification
The Malabar pied hornbill is a large hornbill, at 65 cm (26 in) in length. It has mainly black plumage, apart from its white belly, throat patch, tail sides and trailing edge to the wings. The bill is yellow with a large, mainly black casque. Females have white orbital skin, which the males lack. Juveniles have no casque. It might be confused with the oriental pied hornbill. They weigh around 1kg (2.2 pounds).
Taxonomy
The Malabar pied 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 coronatus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The Malabar pied hornbill is now placed in the genus Anthracoceros that was introduced by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach in 1849. The species is monotypic. The generic name combines the Ancient Greek anthrax, meaning "coal black" and kerōs, meaning "horn". The specific epithet coronatus is Latin for "crowned".
- Scientific name
- Anthracoceros coronatus
- Authority
- (Boddaert, 1783)
- Order
- Bucerotiformes
- Family
- Bucerotidae
- Genus
- Anthracoceros
Range and habitat
The Malabar pied hornbill is a common resident breeder in India and Sri Lanka. Its habitat is evergreen and moist deciduous forests, often near human settlements. It is distributed across three main regions within the Indian sub-continent: Central and Eastern India, along the Western Ghats, and in Sri Lanka. In Central and Eastern India, it ranges from western West Bengal through parts of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, northern and eastern Maharashtra, northern Andhra Pradesh, and north-east tip of Telangana. Along the Western Ghats, the species is distributed in pockets along the eastern slopes and in the Konkan belt and west coast from western Maharashtra through Goa, western Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and in Kerala. In Sri Lanka, the species occurs mainly in the low country and dry zone forests as well as home gardens.
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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