All species › Hoopoes and hornbills
Hoopoes and hornbills | Bucerotiformes
Hoppen en neushoornvogels | Abubillas y cálaos
An order held together mainly by molecular evidence: the families placed in it — hoopoes, wood hoopoes and hornbills — look little alike and differ enormously in size. What they do share is a long, downcurved bill that works as a pair of forceps rather than as a crushing tool, short legs, and broad rounded wings giving a flapping, unstreamlined flight. All of them breed in a cavity, in a tree, a rock crevice or a wall, with little or no lining. Prey and fruit are carried to the nest one item at a time in the tip of the bill rather than regurgitated, and the young hatch naked and helpless.
Families in this order
- Hoopoes | Upupidae1 speciesA long, thin, slightly downcurved bill is driven into the soil to the hilt; the bird can force the two halves apart while they are still buried, to seize a beetle grub or a mole cricket, working at the same time with strong, short-clawed feet. The crest is a row of black-tipped feathers that can be raised into a fan and otherwise lies flat along the head. The broad rounded wings are boldly barred black and white and give an undulating, flopping flight that suggests a large butterfly more than a bird. Breeding is in an unlined cavity; the sitting female and the young give off a foul liquid from the preen gland that smells of rotting meat, and the young also squirt their droppings at an intruder.
- Hornbills | Bucerotidae1 speciesMedium-sized to very large birds with a long, downcurved bill topped in many species by a horny structure, the casque, which ranges from a low keel to a hollow crest and is kept light by internal air spaces. The head is narrow, so that the bird can see its own bill tip; the first two neck vertebrae are fused and the neck muscles and collarbones are reinforced to carry the weight of the bill, and the eyelids bear long, stiff lashes. The bill tip works as a pair of forceps: food is held between the mandibles, tossed into the air with a short jerk of the head and so delivered to the throat, the tongue being too short to work it back. In the tree-dwelling species the female walls herself into a cavity with a mixture of mud, droppings and fruit pulp until only a narrow vertical slit remains, through which the male feeds her and later the young; she stays there for weeks to months and in some genera moults flight and tail feathers all at once during that time. The ground hornbills depart from this: they do not seal the nest, forage on foot on the ground and breed in groups with helpers. The flight is heavy and in the larger species loudly whooshing, because the wing coverts do not fully close over the upper arm and the air beats through between the flight feathers.