IUCN HSG 32 First photographic evidence of Indian Grey Hornbill (Ocyceros birostris) from Navsari Agricultural University, Gujarat, India Jignesh Bhusara 1 , Minal Patel 2 *, and Soufil Malek 3 1 Senior Research Fellow, College of Forestry, Navsari Agricultural University, Gujarat, India 2,3 Ph.D. scholar, College of Forestry, Navsari Agricultural University, Gujarat, India *Corresponding Author: Minal Patel (minalpatel_forestry@yahoo.in) The Indian Grey Hornbill is the only species of hornbill found in Gujarat state in western India. It is an arboreal species, which prefers open deciduous forests and lightly wooded areas, old orchards, roadside avenues, the neigh- bourhood of cultivation and habitation with Ficus benghalensis (banyan) and Ficus religio- sa (peepal) trees (Ali, 1941; Ali & Ripley, 1987; Whistler, 1949). Syconia or figs of the different Ficus species is considered the most important food of Indian Grey Hornbills (Kasambe, 2011). Hornbills are considered as “birds of the for- est” but 44% records of the Indian Grey Horn- bill have been from around city park areas in India (Datta et al., 2018). In Gujarat, the Indian Grey Hornbill is recorded from forested areas of south and central Gu- jarat, and Gir forests (Ganpule, 2016). In the Navsari district in south Gujarat the species is very common and can be frequently sighted at Vansda National Park and surrounding for- est areas (Jambu and Patel, 2021). However, it has not been recorded previously in the urban Navsari landscape, which is about 55 km away from the known locations of the Indian Grey Hornbill. Navsari Agricultural University (NAU) has a 400 hectare campus and harbours wooded land- scape far away from natural forested areas. It is located on the historical “Dandi marg” road in Navsari district. The bird was first sighted in 2019 by Dr. Surendra Gohil (pers. comm.) near the college of forestry arboretum but it was an unconfirmed sighting as there was no photographic evidence. The staff of the For- estry College also reported frequent sightings of new ‘big bird’ near the arboretum between December 2021 to February 2022. During Jan- uary 2022, Jayesh and Jayanti, two staff of the Forestry college, reported the same ‘big bird’. Google images and calls were used to con- firm the bird. During the visit to the college of forestry arboretum on 6 th January 2022, the call of hornbill caught our attention and after thorough scanning through binoculars, a pair of Indian Grey Hornbills was sighted and pho- tographed for the first time in NAU Campus, Navsari. Hornbills were located with the help of local staff in the NAU campus. First, record pho- tographs of the species were taken and species were identified and confirmed using standard field guides (Grimmett et al., 2011; Rasmussen and Anderton, 2012). The periodic observa- tions were collected through direct sightings using binoculars and calls of the birds. Subsequently from total 22 visits to the farm area of the university campus between 6 Jan- Vol. 3: 32–34, 2022 Hornbill Nat. Hist. & Conserv.