For the Birds - Part 3 - African Ground Hornbill

Big, bad, and rad.

Remember Zazu? He’s the well spoken uptight royal advisor to Mufasa.¹ As a kid I thought Zazu was a Toucan, maybe a relative of Sam. In the movie, someone calls him a hornbill. I didn’t realize that a hornbill was actually a kind of bird. I thought it was a diss. But in fact Southern Africa has six species of hornbill. Zazu is based on the Northern Red-Billed Hornbill (which isn’t blue and doesn’t have an accent). Trust me, I met a few.

In my travels I spotted plenty of hornbills. Mostly I would see Red-billed, and often they were in groups of 3-6 foraging in medium high grass until our vehicle passed by and flushed them out onto low branches. I saw one Yellow-billed hornbill out in the villages. And the third variety I saw was the Trumpeter Hornbill.

The Trumpeter Hornbill was much more formidable in person than the pictures did it justice. The large casque on its bill and the red skin around its eye gives it a prehistoric predator look. It’s quite large and hangs out up high in trees. The first one I saw in silhouette on an early morning drive. Later I came across two of them in the same tree in Victoria Falls National Park and felt like they quietly watched me as I watched them.

The most striking of the six hornbills is called the African Ground Hornbill. This behemoth is not just striking among hornbills, it is a remarkable bird by all standards. Picture a Wild Turkey sized bird, with a pitch black body, blood-red skin covering its face and neck, a sturdy black bill, and it weighs in around 13 pounds. It’s a fearsome looking creature.

I put this bird near the top of my “hope to see in Africa” list with low expectations. The SGH is considered a vulnerable species due to habitat loss and is generally confined to conservation areas like National Parks or reserves. So the likelihood of me getting a good look at one of these grim giants felt pretty slim.

But as we drove north from Bulawayo en route to Victoria Falls, dodging potholes and coal trucks all the way up the A8 highway and making conversation about potholes and coal trucks, all three occupants of our Toyota collectively lost their marbles when a huge black bird appeared on the side of the road on a fallen tree standing fully upright just a few giant-dinosauric-bird-lengths from our windows.

We rounded a bend and there it was. Out in the open. Loud and proud. And we just couldn’t keep it together. “Did you see that?”, “What was that?”, “That thing was huge!” Our quiet ride burst to life thanks to a grim reaper of a bird.

I whipped out my app and showed the picture around to make sure that we all saw what we all saw. The African Ground Hornbill in all its glory, just chillin on a dried out log on the dusty roadside. It didn’t make a lot of sense but it sure caused a stir. It just goes to show that amazing birds can show up in unexpected places.

Later, in Hwange National Park, I would see and hear more of these goliaths. Their funky bass note songs travel across the plains and fill in the gaps in nature’s evening song. After seeing a few, I started to feel more accustomed to their striking appearance, but I don’t know if I’d want to be friends with one just yet.

1. RIP.