Garden birds

Trumpeter Hornbill

Bycanistes bucinator · isiZulu: iKhunatha

Here all year

What it sounds like

A long, rising wail exactly like a baby crying. People genuinely go outside to check. Once you know it, you will hear them all over the Berea.

African Bioacoustics Community, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

How to recognise it

Big, black-and-white, with a heavy bill topped by a hollow casque. They travel in noisy parties through the canopy after figs, and the wingbeats are loud enough to hear from the ground. The female seals herself into a tree cavity to nest, and the male feeds her through a slit.