Poached for Its Horn, This Rare Bird Struggles to Survive
I have come to this steaming forest to find a bird. I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth it.
The terrain in Budo-Su-ngai Padi National Park in southern Thailand is so steep in places that you can reach out and touch the path in front of you. With each step on the rain-drenched ground, you risk sliding back down. Insects buzz in nose and ears, and if you stop long enough to look around, you’ll see an army of land leeches inching their wormy, blood-hungry little bodies toward you.
The bird my fellow trekkers and I are after is the ancient, bizarre-looking, and now increasingly rare helmeted hornbill. The leader of our group is Pilai Poonswad, a Thai scientist known as the “great mother of hornbills.” She’s been studying the birds, and working to protect them, since 1978. Photographer Tim Laman is with us, as are a videographer, several members of Pilai’s team, and some people from the village at the bottom of the mountain who are carrying supplies and will help set up our camp. We knew it would be a slog—these birds are shy to begin with, but the growing rate of decline makes finding them something of an odyssey.
When we finally reach the tree we’ve been aiming for, we hole up in a blind about 130 feet away made of camouflage fabric and bunches of branches. The tree is a dipterocarp, a tropical hardwood, maybe 180 feet tall, that towers above most others in the forest. Jutting from its side a little more than halfway up is a gnarled cavity in which a female hornbill had sealed herself a few months earlier to lay an egg. From our spot on the ground we can’t see in, but we know it’s only a matter of time before papa hornbill swoops in to deliver a meal.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/09/helmeted-hornbill-bird-ivory-illegal-wildlife-trade/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=sunstills_20180909::rid=594148660
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