The Jungle Laughed Back: A Meeting with the Helmeted Hornbill
By: Jacinda di LucaLomaLinda
Date stamp: From a misty Tuesday not too long ago.
We’ve just returned from the tangled emerald depths of Borneo, where we were tracking one of the most eccentric creatures to ever grace the canopy: the Helmeted Hornbill.
This bird doesn’t chirp—it declares. The male’s call begins as a hush, a kind of hollow hoot, and swells into a wild, echoing laugh that seems to stir the very ribs of the forest. It is less a sound, more a ritual—jungle jazz at dawn, reverberating through mist and fig tree.
We sat—figuratively and otherwise—with Dayak guides who spoke of the hornbill as an ancestral being. To them, it is not merely a bird, but a spirit: part omen, part oracle, wholly mystery.
Naturally, when Ipakshi unveiled the Helmeted Hornbill Collection, we were entranced. These silks capture something uncanny—the creature’s prehistoric elegance, the rhythm of wingbeats through dense air, the quiet intelligence of eyes that have seen more monsoons than we can count.
Lucinda insists that her most significant discovery, however, was a hornbill-shaped biscuit in what may be the jungle’s only patisserie. (We have the sketch to prove it.)
Until our next dispatch—
May your threads be wild, and your laughter louder than a hornbill’s.
Wings & Whimsy,
The Chirpy Twins
Jacinda & Lucinda di LucaLomaLinda