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Malabar grey hornbill
The smallest Asian hornbill and a Western Ghats endemic, grey-brown with a long curved bill and no heavy casque. It moves in noisy parties through fruiting canopy.
How to recognise it
A loud cackling laugh from the canopy gives it away. In flight it is a long-tailed silhouette that flaps hard and then glides.
Where to see it
Gokarna
Hornbills swallow fruit whole and drop the seeds far from the parent tree, so a forest without hornbills slowly loses its large-seeded trees. This one exists nowhere outside the Western Ghats.
Yana Rocks & Bhairaveshwara Cave Temple (in season) · Vibhuti Falls (in season)
Kochi
The riverside forest at Athirappilly and Vazhachal holds all four south Indian hornbills, this one included, and young people of the Kadar community guard their nests: by 2019 their watch covered 114 hornbill nests.
Thattekad (Salim Ali) Bird Sanctuary · Athirappilly Falls (often)