See the full story on this week’s episode of The Secret Life of The Zoo, which will be broadcast on Channel 4 on Thursday 20 February at 8pm. The chicks at the zoo hatched in May last year but remained sealed in their nest for two and a half months until they were ready to fledge. We’ve already seen the birds in the wild using our boxes to rear their young, giving a vital boost to their wild numbers.” Within these flocks, breeding pairs stay close to each other and the males usually feed the female in order to maintain their pair-bond. Part of this work involves the erection of artificial nest boxes which, in the absence of tall, cavernous trees that they would normally live in, provides the birds with suitable breeding conditions that they’re comfortable in. It is found in lowland and montane, tropical and subtropical climates and in mountain rain forests up to 1,400 metres in Borneo, Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and southern Thailand. In captivity it can live for up to 35 years. Our bird conservationists are out in Malaysia where, alongside our partners, we’re helping the species fight off the threat of extinction as their rainforest home is being cleared to make way for unsustainable palm oil plantations. The rhinoceros hornbill is a large species of forest hornbill (Bucerotidae). The work that we do to breed and protect hornbills, however, goes way beyond the boundaries of the zoo. “It’s fantastic that the bird team at the zoo has been successful in breeding these new chicks. Mike Jordan, our Animal and Plant Collections Director, added: The rhinoceros hornbill is vulnerable to extinction in its native range in South East Asia, its wild number having plummeted due to habitat loss and illegal hunting. One of the Rhinoceros Hornbill pairs chose to nest in a tree identified as Koompassia malaccensis Maing ex Benth (family: Leguminosae).
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