Hornbill Saga - The End of the Days

The hornbill blogs in series are here. Click the links for the previous posts

1. Hornbill Heights - Part 1
2. Hornbill Heights - Part 2
3. Hornbill Heights - Part 3
4. Hornbill Saga - Faithfulness

8th April, 2014

I looked, and looked again. The opening of the nest was larger than it was the previous day. It only meant one thing. The female had let herself out! The male, obviously, with the fruit in its beak was going to feed the chicks. A doting and dutiful father, considering that the female was nowhere to be seen! I was about to have my first look at the little ones but that would be another day.

He was hovering around protectively. Not flying too far away or for too long. The mother, obviously, would have gone elsewhere to recover her strength and get her plumage back in order after two long months of confinement.

11th April, 2014

I did not get my look at the chicks for another three days. Then on the 11th of April I saw a tiny head reach out with the beak wide open to get it's share of fruit from papa bird.

He would regurgitate the fruit one after another, and place them lovingly into the waiting beaks of his little chicks.

Immediately after each short session of feeding the male would leave to look for more food. In his absence I was given a reminder that the turf wars were not over. Mynas, the old occupants of the hole, seemed to have been waiting for the right opportunity. The minute the father hornbill flew off the waiting myna descended to the opening.

It would peep and go away unsure of what to do. Perhaps the hornbill's formidable beak was a deterrent.

12th - 14th April, 2014

The male was suddenly very busy. He had two mouths to feed and so had to go out more frequently. The mother bird had still not made a return or I was not seeing it during the times I was there. It was always the male arriving with food and nest material. 

Even a wasp in the mud below the tree was a potential source of nutrition for his chicks. I had never seen him come to ground level when the mother bird was incarcerated.

16th - 19th April, 2014

It seemed the air was full of hornbills. There were other pair in the vicinity of my hornbill's tree and it seemed that their chicks were also growing. The pair was sitting on a casuarina tree and going through some ritual dance moves!

As I wondered where the female was, she suddenly appeared on a branch with her mate. He feathers had grown back but she looked still worn out from her experience. It had been a full week since she broke out and I hadn't seen her.

The male still was doing what he did best, feed the hungry inmates......................

........... the female was just perched above and observing him. She just did not seem to have built up her strength yet.

However, it was evident that she had passed on some of her skills in confinement to her chicks. They too were adept at shooting out their poo out of the nest with unerring accuracy!

The first few days after her reappearance she made no attempt to feed the chicks.

It was the male who was feeding the chicks who always appeared very hungry.

On occasions the male attempted to coax the female to feed the chicks by passing the stuff in his beak to the female. Perhaps he realized that she was lacking in confidence to deliver the food to the waiting beaks of her little ones.

20th April, 2014

The growing chicks and their ever hungry cries was testing the male's perseverance. 

He not only had to feed them but also had to ensure that the nest was maintained for their comfort. He was now collecting mud from directly under the tree from a track frequented by vehicles and humans.

The father bird was now ferrying clods of dry mud from the heap below the tree. There was some serious renovation going on inside. Now that the female was out the chicks would have a little more space. That would soon become uncomfortable as they started growing bigger.

It seemed that the danger he was putting himself into jolted the female out of her lethargy. She first went and tested her ability to cling at the edge of the nest.

It seemed that the mother bird had finally made up her mind about her role in bringing up her babies. She flew to a nearby tree and returned with what appeared to be some fruit. Her first attempt was very comical. It was obvious that she was woefully out of practice and she just couldn't get it right.

I wasn't sure what the problem was but after a few attempts at passing the fruit to her chicks she gave up and flew to the end of the broken branch above the nest to catch her breath. Maybe the fruit was too large or too smooth that she wasn't able to grip it properly. Perhaps she was afraid of dropping it.

After a few seconds she flew back again to  make another futile attempt.

Back again to the perch to rework her strategy. She was obviously out of practice, more used to receiving stuff than giving it. I though it should have been instinctive!

Attempt after failed attempt occurred over the next four and a half minutes. Somehow, she wasn't able to get it right. Maybe the chicks weren't ready to take something from her because they were so used to getting it from their father. He would have had time to give 20 fruits if he had 4 minutes!

The last time she tried it, I thought I saw the fruit slip out to the ground below. In any case she never made another attempt that morning!

The chicks were growing and their needs were increasing each passing day. Two hungry mouths meant that the father had to take over feeding duties again while mother did other things. 

Nest maintenance was a constant affair so the mother took over the easier chore, bringing mud and nesting material. She would bring a clog of mud and place it on the edge of the hole for the chicks to take inside.

So much more easier than trying to put a fruit in the little beak! I guess the male wasn't very confident in her abilities. He'd sit over her and fix her with a sharp look while she was at it!

2nd - 6th May, 2014

Each time I saw the beaks of the chicks through the slit the seemed to have grown slightly bigger than on the previous day. The frequency of feeding too had increased though the mother still confined her duties to nest maintenance and the father to feeding. 

It seemed that the father shared a special bond with his children. Sometimes I would see him bend over as if to listen to something that the chicks had to tell him.

9th & 10th May, 2014

By my calculation the time had come for the chicks to leave the nest and when I reached the nest on the 9th May I realized I had been been right. The opening was wider.

Initially I thought the chicks had already left but the presence of the mother on the branch above the nest reassured me that they were inside

The chicks were very much there and as hungry as ever. Now the two beaks, when they projected from the nest's opening, looked almost adult width. 

Both the parents were busy running around and there seemed to have been an exchange of duties too. I saw the male flying down to the papaya tree below to pluck leaves for lining the nest. 

That left me wondering. According to my recordings the female had exited the nest on the 57th day after incarceration. I was expecting the chicks to make their move some 30-35 days after that. It was the perfect time but the parents seemed to have other intentions.

11th May, 2014

I had my first real look at the chick(s). The hole was bigger and the chicks had started putting their heads out while begging for food.

It also seemed that the mother bird had regained her confidence. She was also feeding her children now, with assurance!

Papa bird, though, was the children's favourite. They always seemed to look forward to his arrival than their mother's!

The tidbits he carried were more colourful and interesting! Even to me, an observer! He had even carried a garden lizard to his beloved when she was in confinement. A visual, I had missed recording.

Meanwhile the little ones were now always peeking out to survey the world they had to move out into. They would learn how tough it would be to survive sooner than later! A lesson I also was to learn shortly.

The final post will come in the next few days. Things have developed, that was totally unexpected. I will update once I'm sure that the End of the Days has really come!

Watch this space..............

Hornbill Saga - A Lesson in Faithfulness

The link to the last Hornbill post, Incarcerated, is here

It is said that hornbills mate for life and, between the time the female was incarcerated, sometime in early February (10th or 11th) and through the subsequent two months till the female broke out of her confines in early April (? 8th), I was witness to one such saga of faith. The male hornbill after sealing his beloved into a dark and musty hole in the tree hung around for the rest of the period ensuring that his beloved would remain in good health during her enforced confinement.

11th February, 2014

He had to ensure that she was fed and her nest was ready to receive the chicks. The pair had been practicing how to take things from each other's beaks before the female entered it for the last time in the season. Hornbill beaks are not short and round like most birds. They have long beaks that are flattened from side to side and are gently curved. It seemed perfectly designed for the job at hand. Passing of food and building material through the narrow slit in the closed tree hole. At any given time only one bird's beak could go through it. It remained to be seen how that would work.

During the courting period the male practiced passing things to the female for many weeks before the confinement. (See the previous posts). That was done, sitting next to each other on an open branch. Now it was a different situation. He would only have access to her protruding beak and he would have to hold his beak perfectly angled to allow the female to grab what he had brought to her, without dropping it 20 feet below to the ground.

14th February, 2014

He had perfected his technique. He would fly in, grab the edge of the tree hole with his talons and hang on. Clinging on to the nest's edge precariously, he'd pass on the stuff he gathered to the waiting beak of his mate.

In the initial few days it was often pieces of wood or clods of mud that he gathered. Despite her confinement, the female seemed to take her housekeeping duties very seriously.

 The male would fly off in search of food and building materials. Wood was always at hand. A dried tree branch provided plenty of rotting bark. For lumps of mud, he flew elsewhere.

If the pieces were large, he'd break them into smaller pieces before offering it to his mate.

Food was a variety of berries and fruit. Mostly sourced from the fig trees found within a short distance of the nesting tree.

In each trip he would gather a number of the fruit or berry and sitting on the edge of the tree hole he'd regurgitate them one after the other with a peculiar bobbing of his head. A vigorous up-down, backward-forward movement of the head and a fruit or berry would appear in its throat.

 The most  amazing thing about this process is that only one fruit or berry would be brought up each time.

 The fruit, thus regurgitated, would then be presented to his hungry mate through the narrow slit.

After a session of feeding he would go up into the branches of the tree and wait till it was time to go foraging again.

He would spend time preening himself and probably also contemplate on the world outside. He had to kill time. 60 days is a long time in a hornbill's life!

On a few occasions I also observed a smaller bird, which appeared to be a juvenile male, join the male in feeding the confined female. Perhaps it their own child was from a previous season.

The male would fly off in the mornings and return with something for his beloved prisoner. He had, by now perfected his feeding position. Perhaps, realizing that grabbing the lower edge of the hole and trying to give stuff to the female was more risky, he was now coming in from above the nest.

17th February, 2014

23rd February, 2014

Sometimes he'd fly from the side and wedge himself in the groove between the two main branches and then hop onto the ledge formed by the upper part of the bole. This was the most effective way of getting things to his mate.

His weight would be borne by his legs and the tree against which he'd press his body. Then he just had to swing his neck down to align his beak with the opening in the hole.

He could sit like that and regurgitate each fruit or berry without the fear of slipping off. Brilliant!

There would be two main sessions in day, early morning and evening. In the mid-morning and afternoon he;d be away a little longer but always returning to check on his mate. He would sit at some vantage point and survey the scene below. The mynas were still around and he'd have to shoo them away occasionally. More worrisome were the humans. There was a constant flow of people through the abandoned depot. It appeared that there was something going on like illicit arrack or dope sale. This activity was usually in the mornings and it disturbed the birds very often.

Occasionally the male would come back with large pieces of bark. It appeared they were readying for the arrival of the chicks.

26th March, 2014

Most other times it would sit just above the hole. The broken end of the branch housed the nest of a pair of mynas. One one occasion the male seemed to get very irritated by the mynas and was trying to reach inside their nest and destroy whatever was inside.

Fortunately, he never got at whatever was inside and seemed content with the discomfiture he was putting the mynas into.

Summer this year has been harsh. Even the normal thunder showers failed to put up a show. I was wondering how the female was coping in its hole. The male would unfailingly bring her things to eat or line the nest with but it is a wonder how she was surviving in a hot and confined tree hole surrounded by her shed feathers and waste materials. 

It seemed the the female was also playing her part in housekeeping and making herself comfortable. On more than one occasion I have seen her clear the hole by taking out some stuff that seemed like the seeds from the berries she ate or residual mud and feathers. Some she'd throw out and other she'd line the edge of her tree hole which she or the male would knock down later.

All through February and March these daily events continued. The male would always ensure his mate had her fill so that she and her chicks would be healthy. 

Towards the end of March I was tied up with a wedding in the family and the camera remained at home because I could not spend much time watching the nest. Then it happened. I had calculated her confinement period to be about 60-65 days. Since February had only 28 days this year my estimated date for her break out was between the 12th and 20th of April. I had miscalculated and almost missed the day.

8th April, 2014

The wedding was over and I was free, so I had carried my camera after a short break. I saw the male come to feed but to my utter surprise the hole had been enlarged. Till the previous day the opening of the nest was a slit now it was a wide oval opening. It could only mean one thing. The female had broken out and the male was bringing food for the little ones!

He had carried his torch for his beloved for two months and now he was taking over the responsibility of being a good father. The female was not to be seen anywhere. She'd be exhausted and feeling like a dirty rag after so many weeks of confinement in a cramped space. Till she recovered father hornbill's work was not over.

That story will follow. Watch this space...................