The male has a large yellow, down-curving beak topped by a casque, a hollow structure attached to the upper mandible.

The head, upper parts and underparts are black apart from the reddish-brown cheeks, and the white rump, belly and tail.

[2] The brown-cheeked hornbill is native to the Upper Guinean forests region of tropical West Africa, its range including southern Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, southwestern Ghana and Togo.

It feeds on fruits and is an excellent disperser of the seeds, which may be deposited as far from their origin as 6.9 km (4.3 mi).

[1] The fragmentation of the forest and the removal of timber deprives this bird of the habitat it needs in order to find sufficient fruit.