1830 THE PICARIAN BIRDS 



that many observers in India must have discovered the fact of the strange nesting 

 habits of the hornbills previous to Livingstone, who is generally credited with hav- 

 ing been the first to draw attention to the incarceration of the female bird during 

 the period of incubation. Colonel Tickell, for instance, writing in 1855 of the nest- 

 ing of the great pied hornbill in Tenasserim, says: " On my way back to Moulmein 

 from Mooleyit, when halting at Kyik, I heard by the merest chance from the Karen 

 villagers that a large hornbill was sitting on its nest in a tree close to the village, 

 and that for several years past the same pair of birds had resorted to that spot for 

 breeding. I accordingly lost no time in going to the place the next morning, and 

 was shown a hole high up in the trunk of a moderately large straight tree, branch- 

 less for about fifty feet from the ground, in which I was told the female lay con- 

 cealed. The hole was covered with a thick layer of mud, all but a small space, 

 through which she could thrust the end of her bill, and so receive food from the 

 male. One of the villagers at length ascended with great labor by means of bamboo 

 pegs driven into the trunk, and commenced digging out the clay from the hole. 

 While so employed, the female kept uttering her rattling sonorous cries, and the 

 male remained perched on a neighboring tree, sometimes flying to and fro, and com- 

 ing close to us. Of him the natives appeared to entertain great dread, saying that 

 he was sure to assault them, and it was with some difficulty that I prevented them 

 from shooting him before they continued their attack on the nest. When the hole 

 was sufficiently enlarged, the man who had ascended thrust in his arm, but was so 

 soundly bitten by the female, whose cries had become perfectly desperate, that he 

 quickly withdrew it, narrowly escaping a tumble from his frail footing. After 

 wrapping his hands in some folds of cloth, he succeeded with some trouble in ex- 

 tracting the bird, a miserable looking object enough, wasted and dirty. She was 

 handed down and let loose on the ground, where she hopped about, unable to fly, 

 and menacing the bystanders with her bill, and at length ascended a small tree, 

 where she remained, being too stiff to use her wings. At the bottom of the hole, 

 nearly three feet from the orifice, was a solitary egg, resting upon mud, fragments 

 of bark, and feathers." The number of eggs laid by hornbills seems to vary, some- 

 times only one being met with, while at other times four or even five are found in 

 the nest; the present species, apparently, never laying more than four. The female 

 seems to assist in the matting in of the nest hole, using leaf mold and earth, mixed 

 with her own droppings and various decaying vegetable substances, so that the nests 

 are often filthy and give forth an intolerable stench. In all probability the real 

 reason for the retirement of the female hornbill into the recess of a tree is that the 

 bird is about to molt, and that this process is completed while concealed in the tree. 

 Thus the emaciated condition of some of the birds, when liberated, could be accounted 

 for, while their subsequent fat condition and good plumage would be the result of 

 the completed molt. The hole is doubtless plastered up as a defense against ene- 

 mies, of which the hornbills have plenty. The formidable bill of the bird is useful 

 as a weapon of defense, as well as being of the needful shape to serve as a trowel 

 for plastering up the hole of the tree. 



The wedge-tailed hornbills, as the members of the second section of the typical 

 subfamily are collectively termed, comprise several genera distinguished from the 



