After decades of searching, the fourth species of hornbill appeared in Yingjiang Yingjiang County Rong Media Center for photo
On March 5, the reporter received a bird watching enthusiast Wang Genhu photographed a significant difference in the hornbill, and after preliminary judgment, the two birds are most likely brown-necked hornbills that experts have been searching for decades and have not had video records or verifiable eyewitness records in Yunnan.
"Wow, this is a brown-necked hornbill!" What a cow! Are you sure you shot it in Yingjiang? Famous Chinese birdwatchers Ban Dingying and Zeng Xiangle expressed the same amazement after seeing the video.
"At about 3 p.m. on February 18th, I saw 3 hornbills flying into the woods next to my grass and fruit field, I quietly followed, and saw a big bird standing in front of me on a light branch, and 2 moving around in the dense forest, I took videos and pictures with my mobile phone. In recent years, I have often seen reports of Yingjiang hornbills in the media, and from the shape of the large beak, I am sure that the hornbills are hornbills, but they are a little different from what I have seen before. From the video taken by Wang Genhu, it can be seen that the head and neck of a hornbill are obviously brownish yellow, and the throat of the hornbill that flashes from the sky has a faint blue color. Wang Genhu told reporters that he did not expect that his casual shooting would fill the image gap of the brown-necked hornbills in Yunnan for decades.
In the early morning of March 7, the reporter and several local natural ecological protection volunteers formed a search team to embark on a "rhinoceros search trip", after dozens of kilometers of almost "roadless" trekking, a group of people in the forest at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters kept looking. Just when the search was fruitless, it was getting late, and everyone was preparing to return, two dull hornbills suddenly came from the sky, which made the search team excited at once. In the following hours of observation and filming, we finally obtained high-definition images of brown-necked hornbills. Judging from the observations and images, the three brown-necked hornbills are 2 males and 1 female, and 1 male bird should be a juvenile born last year. These images strongly confirm the presence of brown-necked hornbills in Dehong.
"There are a total of five species of hornbills in China, and the brown-necked hornbills are found in Yunnan and Tibet, and the well-documented images in Yunnan are images taken by photographers in Xishuangbanna in the mid-1980s. In the early 1990s, we had records of villager visits in Dehong, but there has been no video testimony. The images taken this time fully prove that the brown-necked hornbills are distributed in Yunnan and Dehong. Han Lianxian, a well-known Chinese ornithologist who has participated in many important scientific expeditions, including the establishment of the Tongbiguan Provincial Nature Reserve in Yunnan, told reporters.
"Brown-necked hornbills usually live in the wet evergreen broad-leaved forests of Zhongshan above 1500 meters above sea level, and there are many areas in Yingjiang that are similar to the environment of the brown-necked hornbills photographed this time, and we will increase our exploration of these areas in the next step to further understand their distribution and breeding in Yingjiang, so as to better study and protect this very precious species." Zeng Xiangle said.
"For decades, brown-necked hornbills have only heard their names in Dehong, and this time it is a very, very exciting thing for us to take their images, and we will increase the search for the fifth type of hornbill, the white-throated hornbill, and strive to photograph them in Dehong as soon as possible." Ban Dingying said excitedly.
Yunnan network reporter Guan Yushu