The Birds of Gambia. 
185 
RED-BILLED HORNBILL. 
Hiviii". North-east Africa, Senegamhia, South-east and South-west 
Africa. (V/.L.) 
These, the smallest of the Gambian Hornbills, are extremely common 
all over the Protectorate, where they frequent both bush-covered and 
cultivated countiy. They go about in pairs as a rule and feed chiefly, if not 
entirely on fruits, nuts and berries, and like so many of our other beasts and 
birds living almost entirely on groundnuts as long as they are frish and still 
lying about in the fields. They nest in holes in trees ; the female, as is usual 
in this family, being walled in and fed by the male during incubation and 
till the young can fly. On the ground they advance by a series of awkward 
hops, but among the branches they are remarkably active in spite of their 
rather ungainly api)earance and long clumsy-looking bill, though when they 
first alight on a tree after fiight the latter seems to almost overbalance them, 
at any rate they nearly always lurch forward as they settle and apparently 
only just save themselves from a bad fall by a sudden upward jerk of the 
tail. Their flight is slow and undulating, a few rapid wing-beats followed 
bj' a long descending glide on motionless wings, and often hindered and 
laborious when there is any wind against them. Their note is a longdrawn 
whistle. 
Their general colour is black, heavily mottled with grey and white 
above, and mostly dirty white below ; the wings are black spotted with 
white, the central tail feathers brown, the others mainly white with grey 
bases. The beak, which is strongly curved and without a casque, is coral-red 
tinged with black at the base of the lower mandible ; the throat and eyelids 
are bare and lemon-yellow in colour, legs dark brown, irides pale yellow ; 
length 18 inches. 
I had one of these birds alive for some time and found it a most 
amusing pet, as it got very tame and loved being handled and played with. 
It unfortunately did not survive to reach home, it was brought to me from 
the nest when nearly fully feathered and accompanied me on my wanderings 
from place to place, loose about the hut dui'ing the day but shut up in a box at 
night and on the march. At first the boys had to cram it with chewed 
groundnuts, but as it grew up it soon took to eating these without any 
other member of the (leiuis Lop/iocerus. The following is a description of 
one shot in Kombo on the 3rd of June, 1910 : — 
Whole head, neck, upper parts, sides of body and wings wholly black, 
glossed on the flights with dark bottle-green ; at the angle of the wing 
towards lower surface is a small spot (two or three feathers) of white ; the 
tail is black, the most external and the two central feathers with two-inch 
white ends. Chest, belly, vent and thighs white. The bill which has a 
fairly defined ridge along the culmen but no real casque, is yellow with black 
ends to both mandibles, the black being prolonged into two irregular lines 
running towards the gape ; about an inch of the central portion of the nasal 
groove, in front of the nostril, is edged above and below with dull red. Iris 
dark brown. The eyes are protected by stilf black lashes and surrounded 
by a dark grey patch of bare skin. Legs very dark grey. Length 20 inches, 
Length of bill (in a straight line from tip to gape) 31 inches. 
