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Trumpeter Hornbill | Bycanistes bucinator
Trompetneushoornvogel | Cálao Trompetero
The Trumpeter Hornbill is the common large forest hornbill of the east and north of the region, black with a white belly and a grey casque on the bill. Its wailing call, which sounds like a crying baby, is one of the characteristic sounds of coastal and riverine forest.
Voice
A nasal, wailing and loud naa-aa-aa-aa, strongly recalling a crying baby, often from a whole flock at once. Also a grunting kwaak. The wings make an audible whooshing sound in flight.
Recording: Rory Nefdt — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
About 60 cm. Head, neck, breast, back, wings and tail are black with a greenish gloss; rump, belly and undertail coverts white. The bill is dark grey, with a large paler grey casque in the male and a much smaller one in the female. The bare skin around the eye is pink to red, the eye brown in the male. In flight the white tips to the secondaries and inner primaries form a broad white trailing edge, and the outer tail feathers show white tips. Juveniles have a short bill without a casque.
Confusion species
Silvery-Cheeked Hornbill (Bycanistes brevis) is much larger, the male with a huge ivory casque, silvery-grey cheeks and wholly black wings without a white trailing edge. Crowned Hornbill (Lophoceros alboterminatus) is smaller, brownish-black, with a red bill and no white belly. In northern Angola the species overlaps with Piping Hornbill (Bycanistes fistulator), which is smaller, has a small casque and shows more white in the tail and wing.
Habitat
Coastal forest, lowland forest, riverine forest and tall trees along rivers deep in savanna, also in gardens and plantations with fruiting trees. It feeds mainly on fruit, figs being the staple, supplemented with insects and occasionally eggs or nestlings. The female seals herself into a tree cavity and is fed by the male while incubating.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Eastern South Africa, from the coastal forests of the Eastern Cape through KwaZulu-Natal to Mpumalanga and Limpopo, then Eswatini, Mozambique, Zimbabwe (mainly the east, the lowveld and the Zambezi valley), northern Botswana along the Chobe and in the Okavango Delta, north-eastern Namibia (Zambezi and Kavango), Zambia, Malawi and Angola. Beyond the region it extends north to Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and southern DR Congo.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Easily seen all year in the coastal forests of KwaZulu-Natal, around St Lucia, and in the riverine forests of northern Kruger, such as at Pafuri. The wailing chorus gives flocks away from afar; follow the sound to fruiting figs. In the evening flocks often fly in a long line to regular roost trees.
Conservation status
Not threatened and fairly common in suitable forest. The species depends on extensive forest and large trees with cavities, so clearance of coastal and riverine forest causes local declines, for example in the Eastern Cape. Fruiting trees in gardens and parks sometimes provide new feeding sites.
Scientific name
Bycanistes bucinator | (Temminck, 1824)
Temminck described the species in 1824 as Buceros bucinator; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Bycanistes was introduced in 1860 by Cabanis & Heine. Bycanistes comes from the Greek bykanistēs, 'trumpeter' — for the loud, braying and trumpeting calls of these hornbills. bucinator is Latin for 'trumpeter', from bucina, 'horn, trumpet' — for the loud, wailing trumpeting call. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape of Good Hope.