Our helmeted hornbills magazine story almost didn’t have any photos of helmeted hornbills in it.

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s true that we were close to not having enough photos of the bird to fill out the magazine story. When Tim Laman, the photographer, first pitched a story about these ancient-looking birds, he knew it would be a challenging assignment. The birds are extremely rare, shy, and elusive.

“I’ve been pursuing hornbills in the rain forests of Southeast Asia for many, many years,” Tim told me. “One of the reasons I wanted to pursue this story was because in my Geographic hornbills story 20 years ago, I photographed many other species, but I never got any good