Watch the hidden 'nest cam' footage of rare hornbill chicks hatching at Chester Zoo

The rhinoceros hornbill chicks, which are both female, arrived to parents Manu and Liv after an incubation period of around 40 days and are the first to hatch at the zoo for more than 13 years. Chester is the only zoo in the UK to ever successfully breed the species.

An adult hornbill.

The rarely seen film is at the heart of a new series of Channel 4’s The Secret Life of the Zoo.

Conservation experts say the arrival of chicks is made even more special given the remarkable survival story of their parents who were rescued from a fire at the zoo in Dec 2018. The pair was safely led away from the fire by dedicated members of the zoo’s bird team and, within hours, they had been re-homed in another area of the 128 acre site.

A still from the video.

Andrew Owen, Curator of Birds at Chester Zoo, said: “It’s very rare to see the inside of a rhinoceros hornbill nest, as the incubation and rearing phase takes place inside a sealed cavity hidden high up in a tree. So to be able to watch chicks on the nest and to be able to follow their development, from hatching through to fledging, is incredibly special.

“The behaviours of the parents are also fascinating. Females seal themselves inside their nests as they raise the chicks, while the doting male remains outside, finding and delivering food for his partner and young. They rely on him completely until they have developed their flight feathers and are ready to leave the nest several months later.

“The new chicks are ever so important, particularly given how threatened the rhinoceros hornbill is in the wild. These are the first of their kind to hatch at the zoo for 13 years and if the arrival of such rare chicks isn’t special enough, the backstory of their parents makes them even more remarkable. The adult pair was rescued from an awful blaze that broke out in the zoo’s South East Asian Monsoon Forest habitat at the end of 2018. For the plucky pair to have gone on and have chicks so soon after is quite astonishing.

“Given all of these circumstances, it’s wonderful to have been able to watch the chicks grow and take flight for the first time.”

The rhinoceros hornbill is vulnerable to extinction in its native range in South East Asia, its wild number having plummeted due to habitat loss and illegal hunting.

Mike Jordan, the zoo’s Animal and Plant Collections Director, added: “It’s fantastic that the bird team at the zoo has been successful in breeding these new chicks. The work that we do to breed and protect hornbills, however, goes way beyond the boundaries of the zoo. Our bird conservationists are out in Malaysia where, alongside our partners, we’re helping the species fight off the threat of extinction as their rainforest home is being cleared to make way for unsustainable palm oil plantations.

“Part of this work involves the erection of artificial nest boxes which, in the absence of tall, cavernous trees that they would normally live in, provides the birds with suitable breeding conditions that they’re comfortable in.

“We’ve already seen the birds in the wild using our boxes to rear their young, giving a vital boost to their wild numbers.”

The chicks at the zoo hatched in May last year but remained sealed in their nest for two and a half months until they were ready to fledge.

See the full story on this week’s episode of The Secret Life of The Zoo, which will be broadcast on Channel 4 on Thursday, February 20, at 8pm.