September 22, 2005

The koel’s eggs usually hatch a day or two earlier than the crow’s. Thus her chicks have a decided advantage over the rightful owner’s offspring as they are fed earlier and grow faster, writes B.A Jeddy

A pair of crows, cawing angrily, chased two fleeter koels or Indian cuckoos. The latter zigzagged mockingly ahead of them, keeping out of pecking distance as though they wanted to lead them on.

Then one of the koels, a grey and white spotted one, quickly wheeled away and flew back to the deserted nest of the crows. It was no more than a crude platform of twigs with a grass-lined depression containing four eggs. The koel, apparently a female, quickly sat down on them.

Not finding enough space for her own eggs, she pushed two of the crow’s eggs over the side which fell to the ground and splattered. She then replaced them with two of her own eggs which were not too different from the previous ones and flew away before the rightful owners returned to resume the work of hatching the eggs.

In Karachi the koel is more often heard than seen. Its monotonous flute-like ‘ku-oo, ku-oo, ku-oo’, with emphasis on the second syllable, is heard long before the morning Azaan and goes on far into the evening. Sometimes when excited the male also cries ‘kiew-kiew-kiew’ very rapidly and the female answers with a high pitched ‘hik-hik-hik’.

The male koel takes possession of a fruiting banyan, peepal or wild jamun tree and calls out to apparently challenge other males or to invite females to share the berries, caterpillars and insects living on the tree and to mate.

After the mating is over, the pair seeks out a convenient crow’s nest to lay the eggs. And as mentioned earlier, they both coordinate to annoy and lead the crows away so that the female can sneak in and lay her eggs.

Koels belong to a vast family of cuckoos which has 50 sub species in Asia and Europe. All, including the three that live in the subcontinent, have perfected the habit of cunningly foisting their eggs on other birds whose breeding season coincides with theirs. This has given the English language the verb “to cuckold”.

The koel’s eggs usually hatch a day or two earlier than the crow’s, thus her chicks have a decided advantage over the rightful owner’s offspring as they are fed earlier and grow faster. Also when all the chicks are hatched and the nest gets overcrowded, the stronger and more aggressive koel chicks sometimes jostle out the weaker occupants of the nest.

The common crow is quite a clever bird in its own right. It often steals food off the table or meat from an uncovered basket. Also it is quick to recognize danger. So why is it so easily deceived into hatching the koel’s eggs and rearing its chicks?

Since the eggs are almost the same colour the crow may not be able to distinguish them from their own, but a few days after they are hatched the female koel chicks start getting their distinctive grey and white feathers and can easily be differentiated. But even then the foster parents continue to lovingly feed them with their regurgitated food. The answer may be that the very act of sitting on the eggs probably creates a bond of affection between them.

Both male and female crows share the duty of hatching and feeding the young. Therefore, it is not unusual to see the koel chicks, even after they are fledged, shaking their drooping wings with pitiful helplessness and uttering hoarse cries, similar to those of the crow chicks, holding up their gaping red beaks pleadingly. After this display of vulnerability the foster parents simply cannot resist feeding them.

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