Behaviour
The courtship and bonding of these birds are critical, as the female must trust the male to provide her with everything when she is incubating and raising chicks. These hornbills lay their eggs inside tree trunks and the female stays inside with the eggs and then with the chicks, while the male brings them food. After the eggs are laid, the male collects mud and the pair pack that mud, along with food and feces, to wall up the tree cavity entrance. This creates a very small hole, only large enough for the male to feed the female (and later chicks) and for the female to defecate out the hole. Once the babies are fully feathered and old enough to leave the nest, the parents chip away the dry mud so the chicks can get out.
The Rhinoceros Hornbill eats fruit, insects, small reptiles, rodents and smaller birds.
Read more about this topic: Rhinoceros Hornbill
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
“When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behaviour by his attitude towards the result of the behaviour arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I look on it as no trifling effort of female strength to withstand the artful and ardent solicitations of a man that is thoroughly master of our hearts. Should we in the conflict come off victorious, it hardly pays us for the pain we suffer from the experiment ... and I still persist in it that such a behaviour in any man I love would rob me of that most pleasing thought, namely, the obligation I have to him for not making such a trial.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, “immortal longings.””
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)