A forest bird with silvery facial feathers and a large bill.
It has silvery facial feathers. Males have a large raised structure above the bill.
In Tanzania’s East Usambara Mountains, researchers studied 14 nests in and around Amani Nature Reserve from July to November 2001 and counted food remains regurgitated beneath the nests. They recorded 861 plant items, 306 invertebrates and 15 vertebrates; fruits made up most of the plant material. Seeds of the introduced tree Maesopsis eminii were especially numerous, with 4,539 counted. Comparing the findings with nesting observations from about seven decades earlier, the authors suggested that the tree may have become a new, favoured breeding-season food and may be linked to an earlier breeding period.
This was one local breeding season, so the suggested timing link is not a species-wide result.
IUCN Red List · Least Concern (LC) · Global
The IUCN Red List assessed the Silvery-cheeked Hornbill as Least Concern globally in 2018 and reported a decreasing population trend. The East Usambara diet study documented a change in food recorded at nests, but it did not measure food availability or population change across the species’ range. Monitoring forest composition and food resources locally can help track changes in habitat used by hornbills.