The Hornbill Is Perhaps The Most Striking
In Appearance.
It is the size of a small, or say a good-sized hen
turkey.
Gray Shirt says the flocks, which are of eight or ten,
always have the same quantity of cocks and hens, and that they live
together "white man fashion," i.e. each couple keeping together.
They certainly do a great deal of courting, the cock filling out his
wattles on his neck like a turkey, and spreading out his tail with
great pomp and ceremony, but very awkwardly. To see hornbills on a
bare sandbank is a solemn sight, but when they are dodging about in
the hippo grass they sink ceremony, and roll and waddle, looking - my
man said - for snakes and the little sand-fish, which are close in
under the bank; and their killing way of dropping their jaws - I
should say opening their bills - when they are alarmed is comic. I
think this has something to do with their hearing, for I often saw
two or three of them in a line on a long branch, standing, stretched
up to their full height, their great eyes opened wide, and all with
their great beaks open, evidently listening for something. Their
cry is most peculiar and can only be mistaken for a native horn; and
although there seems little variety in it to my ear, there must be
more to theirs, for they will carry on long confabulations with each
other across a river, and, I believe, sit up half the night and talk
scandal.
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