Malabar Pied Hornbill

The Malabar pied hornbill is a large hornbill, at 65 cm (26 in) in length. It has mainly black plumage, apart from its white belly, throat patch, tail sides and trailing edge to the wings. The bill is yellow with a large, mainly black casque. Females have white orbital skin, which the males lack. Juveniles have no casque. It might be confused with the oriental pied hornbill. They weigh around 1 kg (2.2 pounds).

The Malabar pied hornbill is a common resident breeder in Sri Lanka and parts of India, including east-central India and the west coast. It inhabits mainly low-altitude moist evergreen and tall deciduous forests, particularly near rivers, but also occurs in plantations and more open forest. Its habitat is evergreen and moist deciduous forests, often near human settlements. It is distributed across three main regions within the Indian sub-continent: Central and Eastern India, along the Western Ghats, and in Sri Lanka. In Central and Eastern India, it ranges from western West Bengal through parts of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, northern and eastern Maharashtra, northern Andhra Pradesh, and north-east tip of Telangana. Along the Western Ghats, the species is distributed in pockets along the eastern slopes and in the Konkan belt and west coast from western Maharashtra through Goa, western Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and in Kerala. In Sri Lanka, the species occurs mainly in the low country and dry zone forests as well as home gardens.

This species is omnivorous, taking fruits, small mammals, birds, small reptiles, insects etc. Prey is killed and swallowed whole. Figs are an important food, contributing 60% of their diet from May to February, the non-breeding season; during breeding, in March and April, up to 75% of the fruits delivered at the nest were figs. They also feed on other fruits, including those of the Strychnos nux-vomica, which are toxic to many vertebrates. Great pied hornbills and Malabar pied hornbills are frequently spotted at the township of the Kaiga Atomic Power Station near Karwar in India. The rich biodiversity in the forest around the plant has become a niche for a wide variety of rare bird species. A study comparing populations over a 23-year period at Dandeli found no significant change. In central India, tribal peoples believed that hanging a skull of the hornbill (known as dhanchidiya) brought wealth.