Malabar Grey Hornbill

Mixed flock

Maharashtra

Anand Pendharkar

2014

Marleshwar is a degraded Sacred Grove and we have seen 4 sps of Hornbills, viz. Great, Malabar Pied, Indian Grey & Malabar Grey Hornbills, here in the past. That day there was lot of activity and calling and it seemed like the 3 Malabar Grey Hornbill juveniles were following their parents around feeding on fruits of Kakkad (Garuga pinnata). Over construction and concretisation as well as spurious shops which dump and burn plastics has degraded the quality of forests here, along with supporting proliferation of weeds. The place needs serious intervention and boards talking about the importance of these species. It is 12km from my native village (Devrukh), which too hosts all these 4species but in smaller numbers & we could set up a Hornbill Monitoring Station from there.