HORNBILL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Hornbill

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/hˈɔrnbˌɪl/ Listen

Hornbill

noun

Bird of tropical Africa and Asia having a very large bill surmounted by a bony protuberance; related to kingfishers.

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Etymology of 'Hornbill'

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"Hornbill" Quotes from Famous Books

... parrots screamed in the tree tops and tiny sun-birds dressed in garments of red and gold and purple, flashed across the trail like living jewels. Once we heard a strange whirr and saw a huge hornbill flapping heavily over the river, every beat of his stiff wing feathers sounding like the motor of an aeroplane. Bamboo partridges called from the bushes and dozens of unfamiliar ...

— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... Dawson, although their tracks were met with every where. Charley had taken several opossums; the presence of these animals generally indicates a good country. Quails were abundant, but not worth our powder; flocks of spur-winged plovers were living at the lakes and swamps, and a shy hornbill (Scythrops) was seen and heard several times. The nests of the white ant were rarely seen; but the soldier ant, and the whole host of the others, were every where. The funnel ant digs a perpendicular hole in the ground, and surrounds ...

— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... feeding singly, in groups, in herds, game of all sizes and descriptions. The rounded ears of jackals pointed at us from the grass. Hundreds of birds balanced or fluttered about us, birds of all sizes from the big ground hornbill to the littlest hummers and sun birds. Overhead, across the wonderful variegated sky of Africa the broad-winged carrion hunters and birds of prey wheeled. In all our stay on the Isiola we had not seen a single rhino track, so we rode quite care ...

— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

Words linked to "Hornbill" : family Bucerotidae, Bucerotidae, coraciiform bird