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  Profile

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  In flight

Hornbills

Silvery-cheeked Hornbill

Bycanistes brevis

• epic
• 45 km/h
• Least Concern

Female seals herself in a mud-plastered cavity, receives fruit through a slit. The male delivers every meal for months.

Population

Not quantified by BirdLife; described as locally common but patchily distributed, with a decreasing population trend

Habitat

Tall subtropical/tropical moist montane and lowland evergreen forest, also dry forest and adjacent savanna woodland/gallery forest, from sea level to about 2,600 m elevation

Fun fact

Outside the breeding season, silvery-cheeked hornbills gather at communal roosts that can number in the hundreds of individuals.

Range

Eastern and southern Africa: resident from Ethiopia and South Sudan/Sudan south through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe to marginal populations in South Africa (vagrant in Eritrea); extent of occurrence roughly 2,420,000 km²

Diet

Omnivorous — mainly fruit (especially figs, from 26+ plant genera), supplemented with insects, spiders, small birds, rodents, small reptiles and centipedes

Size

0.78 m

Lifespan

20 years