HORNBILL - ENVIRONMENT
News: Those
fascinating hornbills
What's in the news?
● The
logo for India’s upcoming G20 presidency was officially unveiled recently at
the Hornbill festival in Nagaland.
● This
popular festival showcases the art, culture and cuisine of Nagaland. It also
brings attention to a family of some of the largest, most magnificent birds in
our country.
Great Hornbill:
Habitat:
● The
Great Hornbill is found in the Himalayan
foothills, the Northeast and the Western Ghats.
● It
is the state bird of Arunachal Pradesh
and Kerala.
Key features:
● With
a wingspan of five feet, it presents an awesome (and noisy) spectacle while
landing on a perch.
● The
wreathed hornbill, the brown hornbill
and the rufous-necked hornbill are slightly smaller, and only found in
Northeast India.
● A
great place to spot the oriental pied
hornbill is the Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand.
● The
Malabar grey hornbill’s loud ‘laugh’
echoes in the Western Ghats.
● The
smallest of the group, the Indian grey
hornbill is found all over (except the Thar Desert), and is often spotted
in urban settings such as Theosophical Society gardens in Chennai.
● Mutualism:
○ Hornbills
prefer tall trees for their nests (breast height being 1.5 meters or more).
○ There
is a mutualism between these birds and the trees where they nest.
○ As
large fruit-eating birds, hornbills play a vital role in dispersing the seeds
of about 80 rainforest trees.
○ Some
trees, such as the cup-calyx white cedar suffer a 90% decline in seed dispersal
beyond the parent tree when hornbill populations decline, negatively impacting
the biodiversity of forests.
Go back to basics:
India
has nine hornbill species:
1. Great Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Vulnerable
● Largest
of all hornbills in India.
● Found
in a few forest areas in Western Ghats and the forests along Himalayas.
2. Rufous-necked Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Vulnerable
● It
has the Northernmost extent, ranging from North-eastern India to Mahananda
Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bengal.
3. Wreathed Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Vulnerable
● Found
in forests from far North-eastern India.
4. Narcondam Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Vulnerable
● Endemic
to the Indian island of Narcondam in Andamans.
● Smallest
home range out of all species of Asian hornbills.
5. Malabar Pied Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Near Threatened
● Common
resident breeder in India and Sri Lanka.
● Habitat:
Evergreen and moist deciduous forests often near human settlements.
6. Oriental Pied Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Least Concern
● Largest
distribution, found in the Indian Subcontinent and throughout Southeast
Asia.
● Habitat:
Subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.
7. White-throated Brown Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Near Threatened
● Found
in forests from North-eastern India.
● Common
habitat: Namdapha National Park, Changlang District, Arunachal Pradesh.
8. Malabar Grey Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Vulnerable
● Common
in the Western Ghats and associated hills of southern India.
9. Indian Grey Hornbill:
● IUCN
Red List: Least Concern
● Habitat:
Mainly on the plains up to about 2000 feet, foothills of Himalayas southwards,
bounded to west by Indus system and to east by Ganges Delta.
Threats:
● Hornbills
used to be hunted for their casques
- upper beak and feathers for adorning headgear despite being cultural symbols
of some ethnic communities in the northeast, specifically the Nyishi of
Arunachal Pradesh.
● Illegal logging has led
to fewer tall trees where the bird’s nest.