Massive birds whose loud wingbeats and rollicking cries resound through tropical rainforests, African hornbills were a common sight in my experience working in Gabon, Central Africa, 30 years ago. Highly gregarious, African hornbills are impossible to miss as they fly around in large, boisterous flocks in search of fruiting trees, and I had the pleasure of seeing them often during that time. Ten years later, I returned to the African rainforests, this time in Ghana. But something was missing, I soon realized… the hornbills I had consistently encountered previously were nowhere to be seen.