Helmeted Hornbills of Ulu Temburong

The Belalong Canopy Walkway in the Temburong National Park, Brunei is one of  a few places in the world where it is  still relatively easy to see the increasingly rare Helmeted Hornbill.  Helmeted Hornbills occur in the wild  only in the wet forests of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo. The red throat skin indicates that this individual is an adult male. All these photos by Hans Hazebroek  were taken from the Belalong Canopy Walkway, Ulu Temburong, Brunei.

Helmeted Hornbills are the most frugivorous of the 8 species of hornbills in Borneo and feed almost exclusively on the fig fruit  crops of canopy level strangling figs. Although these fig trees are common they may only fruit once a year so Helmeted Hornbills need  very large territories of around 8 km2 (800 ha)  for a pair of Helmeted Hornbills  to survive and breed.

A male Helmeted hornbill feeding on a ripe Ficus callophylla  fig next to the Belalong Canopy Walkway in the Ulu Temburong National Park, Brunei, Borneo. If a strangling fig is fruiting nearby when you visit the walkway, you will almost certainly encounter a Helmeted Hornbill.

Both sexes have very long tail feathers. These have probably evolved to assist the hornbills in aerial maneuvers  when defending their feeding territories against rival couples. In these fierce sky battles,  individuals clash head on, banging one solid casque against another. The solid casques on top of the bill are known as “hornbill ivory” and human  demand  hornbill ivory  for ornaments has led to a disastrous collapse in Helmeted Hornbill populations in the past 5 years.

This  photo taken at Pontianak in West Kalimantan  recently by the Indonesian Forest Police shows  229 Helmeted hornbill beaks seized from poachers. Helmeted Hornbills have been poached to extinction in most of  Sarawak and most areas of Kalimantan. The international trade in hornbill ivory is totally banned  but poaching continues in Borneo as the population collapses.