Ground and Underground Nests 



The duties of incubation are carried out by the hen bird, 

 who places herself in voluntary confinement, whilst the 

 male feeds her and her chick during the whole period. 

 Possession is taken of a roomy hole in a tree, high from 

 the ground ; in this cavity the single egg is laid. As soon 

 as the hen commences sitting, her mate assiduously walls 

 her in, leaving only a very small hole through which he 

 may pass food. 



Exactly the nature of the building material used by the 

 hornbills seems open to doubt. Some say clay is used ; 

 others a secretion of the saliva mixed with fragments of 

 fruit ; others, again, have found the skeletons of centipedes 

 in large numbers in the material. The broad, flat beaks of 

 the birds are used after the manner of a mason's trowel, 

 and it is said that the hen lends a hand, or rather a beak, 

 in walling herself up. The heat of the tropical sun 

 soon dries the material used in the masonry and it sets 

 almost as hard as granite, so that escape for the hen is 

 impossible. 



From this time onwards the male hornbill acts as a dutiful 

 husband should. He is unremitting in his attentions on his 

 wife, searching the district far and wide for the daintiest 

 morsels on which to feed her. Without his aid she would 

 certainly starve. But though the male is in possession of 

 his freedom, he is the one to starve as a rule, for he is so 

 solicitous of his mate that he appears to forget that food 

 is necessary for himself. The food is passed to the hen in 

 the form of a bolus enclosed in a coat derived from his 

 own gizzard, so it is said. Other observers state that the 

 hen's fare is divided into courses consisting of fruit and 

 other vegetable food, insects, mice and reptiles. 



By the time incubation is complete the enforced captivity 

 and lack of exercise, combined with excellent and abundant 

 fare, makes the hen decidedly fat. The poor male bird, on 

 the other hand, is often reduced to a mere skeleton ; in fact 

 he frequently dies of starvation. The precise meaning of 

 the incarceration of the hen is open to some doubt, but 



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