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!

The Hidden World of African Rift Valley

Abyssinian Ground Hornbill

Meet Petrie, our handsome male Abyssinian ground hornbill. Petrie spent a lot of time with zookeepers when he was a chick and because of that, and he now seems to forget he is a hornbill at times! He likes to “share” his food with us, his current keepers, like hornbills do for each other as a pair bonding exercise. He also likes to hang out with us to watch what we do. We have to be extra careful not to accidentally leave scrub brushes or hose nozzles too close to his enclosure as his long bill is especially handy for snatching shiny objects, which he then carries around like a treasure! In the wilds of East Africa, a hornbill’s bill is used to forage for food, flipping over rocks and sifting thru leaf litter looking for insects and small vertebrates.

Come see Petrie fly over the giraffe exhibit in African Rift Valley at our Wings of Africa Bird Show at 1pm daily starting on Memorial Day.

Next time we will introduce you to our beautiful female Abyssinian ground hornbill who also stars in our bird show.