They cannot swallow food caught at the tip of the beak as their tongues are too short to manipulate it, so they toss it back to the throat with a jerk of the head.

Hornbills are omnivorous birds, eating fruit, insects and small animals. Fruit forms a large part of the diet of forest hornbills. The largest assemblies of hornbills form at some roosting sites, where as many as 2400 individual birds may be found.ĭiet Female great hornbill feeding on figs. Larger flocks sometimes form outside the breeding season. Hornbills are diurnal, generally travelling in pairs or small family groups. Despite their close appearances, the two groups are not related, with toucans being allied with the woodpeckers, honeyguides and several families of barbet, while hornbills (and their close relatives the ground hornbills) are allied with the hoopoes and wood-hoopoes. In the Neotropical realm, toucans occupy the hornbills' ecological niche, an example of convergent evolution. A number of mainly insular species of hornbill with small ranges are threatened with extinction, namely in Southeast Asia. They are monogamous breeders nesting in natural cavities in trees and sometimes cliffs. The family is omnivorous, feeding on fruit and small animals. They are the only birds in which the first and second neck vertebrae (the atlas and axis respectively) are fused together this probably provides a more stable platform for carrying the bill. Both the common English and the scientific name of the family refer to the shape of the bill, 'buceros' being 'cow horn' in Greek. They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly coloured and sometimes has a casque on the upper mandible. Hornbills (Bucerotidae) are a family of bird found in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Melanesia.

Rhinoceros hornbill closeup