Yellow-billed Hornbill nest in Electricity Pole

During an atlasing outing in May I witnessed an Yellow-billed Hornbill flying with a worm in its beak. It flew straight to an electricity pole where I found a nest. A week later I returned to the nest and took some videos of the male feeding its chicks.

The nest was about 5 m from the ground with the entrance on the northern side of the pole.

I was unfortunately not able to see how many chicks were in the nest. At one point in the video I could see two bills – the one had to be the female and the other of the chick – but there might have been more chicks.

I cannot find anywhere in the literature a reference to Yellow-billed Hornbill making a nest in a man-made structure - only nesting logs. So this seems to be very unique.

This record in May is also a very late breeding record. According to the literature September to March is normal.

It was also interestingto note that the nest was next to a gravel road used by cars and above a pedestrian road which is used by hundreds of school children during the week. While trying to video the nest I had to wait for more than an hour for all the children to pass on their way to school. During this period the male waited patiently with a berry in its beak and just after 08:00, with all the children now at school, it flew straight to the nest to provide his family with the food they need!