Kakum National Park, Ghana
May 2011

The Western Little Hornbill is distributed in tropical Africa from Sierra Leone in West Africa to western Uganda and south to the Congo Basin. It has been split from Eastern Little Hornbill H. granti by the HBW and Birdlife International Checklist on the basis of the size and colour of the casque, the grey-black rather than spotted wings and the more prominent white tips to the tail. It is found in lowland and gallery forest where it usually sits perched unobtrusively on a thin branch or liana from where it sallies to capture its insect prey.

It is a small and rather scruffy hornbill with an indistinct greyish supercilium. The bird here is a male with a dull red point to the bill which is lacking in the all black bill of the female.

The song is a series of rather soft notes.