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Southern Ground Hornbill — printable fact sheet
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Southern Ground Hornbill
Bucorvus leadbeateri
The southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri) is a black, turkey-sized hornbill that has given up flight for most purposes and walks the African savanna hunting on foot, killing snakes, tortoises, frogs, hares and even small mongooses with a heavy bill. It is one of the sl…
Did you know?
- Southern Ground Hornbills are considered a symbol of rain and fertility in many African cultures, but are also sometimes persecuted due to superstitions.
- A breeding group raises about one chick every three years, and the second egg is essentially insurance that is never cashed. Their booming dawn call is so deep that people frequently mistake it for a lion. Ground hornbills eat almost anything they can kill on foot and have been recorded taking venomous snakes and even hares. Because a bird must be nearly a decade old before it breeds, artificial nest boxes and the hand-rearing of doomed second chicks are now central to their conservation.
What I learned
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