India, June 10 -- After a female oriental pied hornbill in Lodhi Garden started regularly feeding grey hornbill chicks, Delhi birders have launched an initiative to understand the reasons behind the same, and to map out the hornbills in Lodhi Garden, over a period of around a month.

Around the middle of May, many visitors to the garden had observed a peculiar sight. A lone female Oriental pied hornbill was arriving at the nest of an Indian grey hornbill family, to feed the chicks as though they were her own. "We do not know why she is displaying this behaviour. She scares away the parent grey hornbills if they try to stop her, as she is much bigger than them. Now she has taken over 3-4 different nests," says Nikhil Devasar, founder of De...