The Great Indian Hornbill count: Nagaland’s biggest bird census

The great hornbill — the bird whose silhouette crowns Nagaland’s biggest festival — is the subject of the state’s largest-ever bird census, spanning every district.

Early findings are sobering: the birds are concentrated in protected and community forests, and vanish where hunting is unchecked.

The census is intended to make the bird a measure of the state’s conservation health — the hornbill as a pulse check.