Northern Ground Hornbill

About the Northern Ground Hornbill

The Abyssinian ground hornbill or northern ground hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus) is an African bird, found north of the equator, and is one of two species of ground hornbill. It is the second largest species of African hornbill, only surpassed by the slightly larger southern ground hornbill.

The Abyssinian ground hornbill was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Buceros abyssinicus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The type locality is Ethiopia. The Abyssinian ground hornbill is now placed in the genus Bucorvus that was introduced, originally as a subgenus, by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830. The species is monotypic. The generic name is derived from the name of the genus Buceros introduced... Wikipedia →