The Hidden World of African Rift Valley

Abyssinian Ground Hornbill - Jekyll

Our female Abyssinian ground hornbill, Jekyll, used to be very shy and nervous when she first came to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in 2007. She was nothing like Petrie, who we introduced you to last week! She soon became more confident and comfortable around her keepers, and now is a star in our Wings of Africa Bird Show!

Zookeepers are training Jekyll a “retrieve” behavior to add to the foraging behaviors she already knows and performs for the bird show, like flipping a rock to find food or sifting through leaf litter where she finds a fake snake and then shakes it to “kill” it.

Watch the video clip below of a recent training session with Jekyll.
 As the training progresses, keepers will switch out the orange dog toy you see Jekyll carrying in the video for a fake rubber snake. She will be trained to take the snake back to a second keeper (who is located “offstage”) and place it into the black tub for a treat as part of the bird show. This will allow keepers to call her out of the bird yard after her role in the show is finished.

Come learn how handy ground hornbills’ bills are for foraging and see how Jekyll does with her new behavior in African Rift Valley at our Wings of Africa Bird Show at 1:00pm daily starting Memorial Day.

Coming up in the next blog in the series, we’ll meet a docile, small African creature with LOTS of legs!