Birders launch month-long ‘hornbill watch’ at Lodhi Garden

A female Oriental pied hornbill in Lodhi Garden feeds grey hornbill chicks, prompting a study by birders to understand this unusual behavior.

After a female oriental pied hornbill in Lodhi Garden started regularly feeding grey hornbill chicks, Delhi birders have launched an initiative to understand the reasons behind the same, and to map out the hornbills in Lodhi Garden, over a period of around a month.

Bird enthusiasts observe the grey and oriental pied hornbill at the Lodhi Garden on Saturday. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)

Around the middle of May, many visitors to the garden had observed a peculiar sight. A lone female Oriental pied hornbill was arriving at the nest of an Indian grey hornbill family, to feed the chicks as though they were her own. “We do not know why she is displaying this behaviour. She scares away the parent grey hornbills if they try to stop her, as she is much bigger than them. Now she has taken over 3-4 different nests,” says Nikhil Devasar, founder of Dehibird foundation and one of the many birders who have been observing the phenomenon for the past few weeks.

In order to understand the reason for the same, Delhibird foundation in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund for nature, India, will be monitoring the oriental hornbill and the other grey hornbills in the garden throughout the day, for the coming month.

“This is entirely dependent on volunteers. Everyday, multiple volunteers will monitor the hornbills in shifts. We will ensure that one person is there everyday from 5:00 am to 8 or 8:30 am, however after that, monitoring will continue only if people are available.The volunteer will be noting down all the activities of the hornbill, such as what she ate, which tree she went to, and so on ” said Devasar.

Members of the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), India, said they had been documenting the phenomenon too and decided to collaborate with the individual birders. “The pied hornbill’s behaviour has given us an opportunity to understand how hornbills adapt in an urban landscape. Volunteers will start monitoring from Wednesday morning, observing every activity taken by the hornbills at five nests which are close in proximity to each other. We envision this to be a long term citizen science project,” said Nikhil John, assistant manager, Nature Connect, WWF India.

The Delhibird foundation held two walks on Saturday and Sunday morning, in order to introduce volunteers to the area and the task ahead of them. Devasar stated that group which attended the walks consisted of people from across ages and occupations. “We are all just bid lovers, and are together trying to understand what is happening.”

The Oriental pied hornbill is not a species native to Delhi. Largely a Terai and Himalayan foothill species, there are at least two in Delhi. One is often spotted around Jamia Millia Islamia, while the other has made her home in Lodhi Garden, with both believed to be female.

For the past few weeks, observers at Lodhi Garden spotted the oriental pied hornbill repeatedly arriving at the nest cavity of an Indian grey hornbill family, regurgitating berries and fruits into it, which would then be accepted by two beaks inside the cavity. Soon after, the male grey hornbill would arrive to also feed the chicks, but would sometimes be chased away by the pied hornbill.