A 19TH-CENTURY “TWITCHER”
Henry Robert Kelham (1853-1931) was a senior British Army officer who lived in Singapore for several years. He was also a bird enthusiast and amateur taxidermist who documented the birdlife of the region in great detail. Here he describes an encounter with an oriental pied hornbill in what is now Seletar.
Like all the hornbills, this one is easily tamed, and makes a most amusing pet; the tamest I ever saw was at Trafalgar, a tapioca plantation on the north side of Singapore, where I stayed for a few days in May, 1879. The following is from my notebook:
“On reaching Trafalgar we put on sarongs and made ourselves comfortable in long chairs, out in the open air. In the course of conversation, Mr K, our most hospitable host, mentioned he had a tame hornbill; and a few minutes later we saw it sitting on the top of the house. But, on being called, it flew down and perched on the backs of our chairs.
I never saw such a tame bird. Though it had the full use of its wings and flew about among the trees, it seldom went far away, coming when Mr K called out its name, “Punch”, and taking bread, plantains and other things out of our hands. It was much pleased with the round buttons on my coat, and tried to tear them off – I suppose, thinking them to be berries of some sort.
It was of the black-and-white species, with white bands near the ends of the long tail-feathers, and with a casque and beak dusky-white. At dark, it flew up and roosted among some cocoa-nut trees close to the house.”
– Excerpt from Ornithological Notes Made in the Straits Settlements and in the Western States of the Malay Peninsula, by HR Kelham, 1882.