430 



BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Erlanger ^^ gives the clue to the presence of this bird in the lowlands 

 when he writes that it is a mountain bird, but visits the valleys and 

 lowlands during the season when the fruit is ripening. Zedlitz^* 

 gives us still more information. He says that the birds are to be 

 found west of the eastern Abyssinian-Danakil escarpment, but de- 

 scend to the lowlands east of it in the spring when, after the winter 

 rains, everything is growing and ripening and, in tlie highlands the 

 season is more retarded. Thus, he found this species quite common 

 at Ghinda in early February but not in pairs, only in small groups, 

 w4iich observation he correctly interprets as a suggestion that the 

 species is not a breeding bird in the lowlands. 



Even in the uplands this species is somewhat nomadic, the ripening 

 of wild fruits being the apparent reason for its wanderings. Thus, 

 although Heuglirf found it in the Dega district, and Antinori met 

 with it commonly there, the latter saw it but rarely in the Ambo-Karra 

 region, and the experience of other travelers is similar in that the 

 birds were seen commonly in different places, and were not observed 

 in others of similar nature. In summing up the notes of the leading 

 writers it appears the birds are nomadic rather than local, and their 

 absence or presence in any one place is a temporar}^ one. 



The immature female has the bill much shorter than an adult of 

 the same sex in the series examined, and has the mandible and max- 

 illa dark bluish black except at the tips and the distal inch or so of 

 the mandibular tomia, which are pinkish in the dried specimen. The 

 bill in the young bird also lacks the serrations present in the max- 

 illary and mandibular tomia of the adults. In plumage the imma- 

 ture and adult are alike except that the white rectrices are blackish 

 basally in the former and white throughout in the latter. 



All in all I have examined only five birds and therefore I can not 

 say much about the size variations of Hemprich's hornbill. How- 

 ever in view of the comparative rarity of this species in many mu- 

 seums, I append the measurements in the hope that they may be of 

 use to other students. 



" Immature. 



8«JourD. f. Ornith., 1905, p. 439. 

 M Idem, 1910, p. 763. 



