Hello and welcome.

This is the Science of Birds.

I am your host, Ivan Philipson.

The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners.

And I think you know that it is Random Bird Thursday.

Random Bird Thursday episodes are relatively short and sweet.

In each of these RBT episodes, I spotlight a bird species that probably won't get featured in a full-length normal episode.

There are over 11,000 bird species in the world, so Random Bird Thursday gives us a chance to celebrate one of them that we might otherwise overlook.

So who do we have today? Let's push the Random Bird Selector button and see who we're talking about.

All right, excellent.

We have the white-thied hornbill by Canistis Albo-Tibialis.

Hornbills are always super cool, so this will be fun to talk about this species.

Okay, so if nobody has any objections, I'm just going to go ahead and get right into it.

What does the white-thied hornbill look like?

Well, can you picture a hornbill?

In general, they have pretty large heads and really large thick bills that are generally down-curved, and many of them have longish

tails. Well, the white-thied hornbill definitely has a massive head and bill relative to the body.

The bill is down-curved, and it has on top of it

something we call a cask, C-A-S-Q-U-E. That's the sort of weird thing growing out of the top of the

bill, and the shape of it varies across different hornbill species, and not all hornbills have

a really dramatic cask. But this one does.

It looks kind of like an upturned axe blade, like something an executioner would use.

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