This week I finished an illustration of the Ground Hornbill. These are REALLY interesting birds. Their enviably long eyelashes are actually modified feathers that shield their eyes from dust and sunlight. Hornbills call together before dawn in a chorus of repeated low grunting notes that sounds not unlike a distant lion, and they amplify their calls by inflating the big, red, balloon-like wattle below their bills. They are very slow breeders and, as a result, a pair produces just one brood of two chicks every nine years, only one of which survives. Ground hornbills have lived up to 70 years in captivity, making them one of the world’s longest-lived birds, on par with albatrosses.