There are some books that lead you along the pathways of fantasy, making you believe one impossible thing after another ... and then they blow it. They push their luck too far and bring the reader up short, saying, “Come on — this is just silly; no one could possibly take that seriously.”
Wildlife is often like that. I am prepared to believe in the hornbill family, all 55-odd species of them, and I have admired them across Africa and Asia. Then you get to the rhinoceros hornbill, and you say, “Aw, come on now! The others were fine, but this is too much.”
It was a day of hornbills. I was on the Kinabatangan River in Borneo doing conservation work with World Land Trust.