Female. Taken from a boat ride in Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia. This was from a fairly close floatby (uncropped) I've included some shots of the river. Just opposite the park there are several floating restaurants serving local cuisine. (The food served in the park is very good but pretty boring compared to these restaurants) There are 54 species of Hornbills in the world. They comprise the order Bucerotiformes which is sub-divided into 2 families and 9 genera. Hornbills are strictly 'old world' birds meaning their range extends from Africa across India and Asia to Papua New Guinea. They do not occur in the Americas where a similar ecological niche of medium sized species is filled by Toucans. Hornbills occupy a wide variety of habitat from the Namib Desert to the lushest S. E. Asian tropical rainforest. Though Hornbills live in a wide range of habitats they prefer mature forests and over 75% of the 54 species are forest dwellers. Many Hornbills are relatively large forest birds and require large expanses of forest, with many old trees for nesting, in order to maintain a viable breeding population. www.earthlife.net/birds/bucerotiformes.html This requirement for large expanses of forest is of course becoming problematic for this group of interesting birds. This particular bird of the lowland forest is the species that survives best in forest fragments. f/5.6, iso 1000, 1/500