From below, its body pattern resembles a lollipop. The bill is thick with a bright light blue top and a bright yellow underside. While the throat, chest and stomach blood red with a black necklace around the neck.
From above, the Black and Red Broadbill appears jet-black with a bit of maroon on its undertail coverts and white bars on the wings. Its colorful and distinctive body pattern is in contrast with its cicadas-like croaks. However, the sound of its flapping wings is as loud as thunder, so the Dayaks call it Pambadi Guntur, The Rumbling Thunder.
The distribution of this lowland forest bird is widely-stretched from Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, to Indonesia. However, similar to its cousin the Black-and-yellow Broadbill, the Black and Red Broadbill can only be found in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Compared to other birds in its family, larger bill and blood-red underpart coverts are two distinctive features of the Black and Red Broadbill.
“This species is often found in forest edges, streams or roads,” said Jihad, the Bird Conservation Officer of Burung Indonesia. It is around the river that this bird, whose Latin name is Cymbirhynchus macrorhynchos, hunts for its favorite food. It usually perches on canopy or open ground to hunt insects, crabs, snails and small fish.
The Black and Red Broadbill nests on trees around the rivers. The shape of the nest is unique, elongated and hanging from a tree branch, with a hole in the middle where it goes in and out.