Will the Hornbills Move into My Neighbourhood?
By Aloke Lal
The hornbill should not have been there.
I was accustomed to seeing Great Hornbills high in the trees around our garden, moving from one canopy to another. But that morning last year, one of them was on the ground.
Something seemed wrong.
As I approached, the bird flew up, but only as far as a bottlebrush branch, perhaps ten feet above the ground. The great wings announced even the short flight with that extraordinary whooshing sound characteristic of hornbills—a rhythmic rush of air that can be heard before the bird itself is seen.
It did not leave. It sat there watching me.
I began looking among the Syngonium that forms a thick ground cover below our ancient mango tree. And there, almost hidden by the leaves, was a tiny hornbill chick. It was alive.
There was a nest high above in one of the roadside mango’s hollows. How the chick had fallen from it I shall never know. I lifted it very gently with a leaf and placed it at a safer, higher level. A closer look suggested that it might have been injured.
I had no idea what else I could do. The parent remained nearby, keeping watch. Perhaps, I hoped, it would know what I did not.
So I withdrew.
When I returned later, the little life had ended.
There was, however, another chick in the hollow.
In the days that followed, we watched the survivor approach that great frontier between dependence and independence. When it eventually emerged from the security of the mango, its first flights were wonderfully modest—to a nearby branch, then to a close-by tree. One of the parents accompanied it.
Gradually, the distances increased. And with every flight came that remarkable sound—the powerful wings beating the air, a deep whoosh-whoosh-whoosh that seems almost too substantial to have been made by feathers. There was an almost imperceptible whoosh sound to accompany it.
Confidence did not arrive suddenly. It was earned, flight by flight, until one afternoon there seemed to be no practising anymore. The young hornbill flew away with an assurance that had not been there before. A parent flew alongside.
Watching them, I found myself thinking: I cannot fly for you, but for a while, I will fly beside you.
That was last year.
This year, the house-hunters are back.
For several mornings, a pair of Great Hornbills has been visiting the same ancient mango near our boundary wall. Sometimes their presence is announced by their loud, resonant calls; at other times, by the unmistakable rush of their wings overhead. They inspect one hollow, disappear briefly inside, emerge, and move on to another.
Then, one morning, the plot thickened.
There were three.
The pair had arrived with another hornbill, and the newcomer appeared equally interested in the proceedings. All three moved around the old mango and examined the same hollows.
Who was this third bird?
A friend?
Or perhaps an architect, summoned for a professional opinion on the structural soundness of the shortlisted properties?
There is another possibility I find irresistible. Could it be last year’s surviving chick, now grown, returning to the tree in whose darkness its life began?
I have no way of knowing. And perhaps I don’t want to know. A little mystery improves both gardens and stories.
What I do know is that the hornbills have made me look differently at our mango.
It is very old. Its trunk carries scars; moss and ferns have colonised its bark, and time has excavated hollows where once there was solid wood.
(Image created by the writer using generative AI)
To us, these might look like the imperfections of age. To a hornbill, they are real estate.
There is something worth remembering here. We sometimes regard an ageing tree as expendable because it has become hollow or misshapen. A sapling may replace its greenery, but it cannot replace its history.
You cannot plant a fifty-year-old hollow.
And so the mango will remain exactly as it is.
No investigation of the cavities, no assistance to the prospective tenants from us, and certainly no advice to the architect. If they choose to move in, the only hospitality we shall offer is privacy.
Last year, one little inhabitant of that mango never knew the sky. The other began with the nearest branch and eventually discovered that there need not always be a branch nearby.
Now three hornbills are examining the old house again.
Perhaps another story is waiting inside that weathered trunk.
The architect, presumably, will let us know.
(Aloke Lal is a former DGP, author of six bestselling books, painter and TedX speaker. He is the Festival Director of the Crime Literature Festival of India.)
