"The Southern Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri) is, in the author's considerable experience, the most dignified bird on the African continent. It walks rather than flies, covering its territory with the measured authority of something that has assessed the available options and found walking more appropriate. It lives for up to seventy years — longer than most of the Colonel's acquaintance — and breeds through a cooperative social system of considerable complexity, in which the dominant pair is assisted by a group of helpers, typically previous offspring, whose selfless contribution to the family's success the author finds, on reflection, admirable. It is a bird of gravitas. The author intends to say so at length."
The soap had gone at two o'clock.
The Colonel had not witnessed this directly. He had been at the eastern waterhole and had returned to find the camp in the condition that a Ground Hornbill leaves a camp when it has completed its inspection — which is to say, largely intact but with several items relocated according to a logic that was the bird's own and not obviously shared.
The soap was gone. A fork had been moved to the centre of the camp table and left there with the air of a conclusion. The Colonel's shaving mirror, propped against the water container as was his habit, lay on its face in the dust. This last detail would become relevant.
Cetshwayo, from his chair, had watched all of it. He had not intervened. There had seemed, in his assessment, no useful purpose in intervening.
The Colonel surveyed the camp, noted the soap's absence, noted the fork, made a brief inquiry to which Cetshwayo responded with the economy of a man who knows that the full account will not improve the situation, and proceeded to his notes.
By the third medication the field note had reached considerable altitude.
"The Ground Hornbill's call — a deep, resonant boom carrying upward of three kilometres across open bush — is among the great acoustic facts of the African morning. The author has heard it at dawn from distances that rendered it more felt than heard, a sound less in the air than in the chest, the continent announcing itself by the oldest available instrument. In the author's view it compares favourably with the regimental drum of the Green Jackets — which is a comparison the author does not make lightly."
The bird boomed outside the camp.
The Colonel paused. Found this appropriate. Continued.
"The cooperative breeding structure of the Ground Hornbill — dominant pair, multiple helpers, shared investment in the group's young — demonstrates a social organisation that the author has encountered, in his considerable experience, only among the finest military units. The selflessness of the helper birds, who defer their own breeding for the good of the family group, represents an institutional commitment that the present author would be glad to see in several quarters he could name but will not."
The bird boomed again. Closer.
What had happened to the shaving mirror became clear at three o'clock, some hours before the field note was begun, when the Colonel had returned from a brief errand to find a Ground Hornbill in the act of attacking it.
Not examining it. Not inspecting it. Attacking it — with the full, committed, repeated force of a bird that has identified a rival of equal size and finds its continued presence in the camp unacceptable. The mirror lay against the water container. The Ground Hornbill stood before it. It struck. It struck again. It adjusted its angle and struck a third time with increased authority.
The Colonel had stood at the camp entrance for some moments.