A story in a Gujarati kids’s fable mentions how a koel and a parakeet were buddies surviving on a substantial banyan tree on the borders of a town. Both utilized to hang out, consume, sleep, and sing together. Once a hunter heard them singing and started lovely them to capture them. He informed the birds that they were singing melodiously however as they were sitting too expensive, their tunes were not audible to individuals on the ground. If they rested on a lower branch of a tree, villagers would hear their tunes and value them, he said.
Flattered, the parakeet informed the koel that they must follow his guidance and rest on a lower branch. The wise koel, nevertheless, comprehended the wicked style of the hunter and declined to rest on a lower branch. But the parakeet did not attend to the koel’s cautions, flew to a lower branch, and began singing. Immediately, the hunter captured the parakeet. On a lighter note, this cautionary tale is most likely why we discover more parakeets in cages than koels.
The female koel is discovered almost all over and is understood to contract out all its motherhood tasks – it even lays eggs in nests developed by other birds.
Bollywood director Rajkumar Hirani might be the very first to include the lesser-spotted female koel in his hit ‘3 Idiots’ in the scene where Professor Viru Sahastrabuddhe (played by Boman Irani) includes a nest of Asian koel on his bike to explain how competitive the world is. While I was viewing the film in a theatre, I heard individuals seated around me whispering, “Hey, is it really a cuckoo? Cuckoo must be black and this is brown with white spots!” This is due to the fact that we believe that both male and female Asian koels are monomorphic, suggesting similar in look, shape, and pigmentation.
Like peacocks and peahens, male and female Asian koels are appreciable by their look. But alas, unlike the nationwide bird, there are no various names for a male koel and a female koel in our languages!
The male Asian koel has a shining black or shiny dark blue/purple colour. The female Asian koel has brown plumes with white dots on its upperpart, rufous forehead with white dots, rufous tail plumes towards completion with white dots, brown upperparts with white dots, and white underparts with brown stripes. Both the male and the female have blood-red eyes with a black iris. But the male’s eyes look redder due to the fact that of the shiny black background of his plumes. Both sexes have greyish legs and a little connected, greyish beak with a light greenish tint from the suggestion towards the gapeline. Their claws are greyish brown with thick raised horizontal lines throughout the claws. These birds do not reside in sets however form one throughout their breeding season.
Like numerous other types of birds, koels often bill-wipe. They do that to clean their beaks by rubbing them on a branch or any other surface area from side to suggestion of the beak. You should have seen this behaviour in birds like crows, mynas, sunbirds, and so on. It is hard to discover koels doing it due to the fact that they keep themselves concealed in the canopy of high trees. But if your home is on the 3rd or 4th flooring of a multistorey building, you can discover koels under the canopy of a close-by high tree.
Asian koel (Eudynamys scolopacea), which comes from the cuckoo family of birds, is discovered almost all over in India. Out of almost 145 types of cuckoos, 12 to 13 types are discovered in Gujarat. Asian koel is the state bird of Jharkhand along with the Union Territory of Puducherry.
Let’s keep in mind here that keeping a parakeet or a koel as an animal is unlawful.
Asian koels are shy yet wise birds due to the fact that they perch on the leading branches of a high tree canopy to keep themselves safe from predators. We frequently hear the koel’s tunes however don’t see the bird that frequently. But this is not the only smartness of the koel.
Unlike the majority of bird types, koels do not labour to build their nests to lay eggs. Nor do they hatch eggs or labour to raise chicks. They contract out all these jobs. Their breeding season begins in summertime. But the female lays her eggs in nests of other birds such as crows, mynas, starlings, and so on. when they are not around. In this procedure of laying eggs, often the female koel presses a few of the eggs of the host bird off the nest or perhaps often consumes them. After laying eggs, the female koel leaves it to the host bird to hatch them. The latter usually stops working to separate in between its own eggs which of the koel and hence requires. This behaviour of laying eggs in the nests of other birds and deserting them is referred to as brood parasitism.
But the ‘cheating’ does not end here. When eggs are hatched and hatchlings come out, the host once again stops working to acknowledge that a few of the hatchlings are not its own. So, it feeds them like its own chicks. With time, the chicks grow and start appearing like koels. Eventually, the host bird understands that a few of the chicks are certainly not its own and deserts them. But already, the majority of the koel chicks would have found out to fly and discover food by themselves.
The crow may be a wise bird however the koel is smarter. The Asian koel couple sits near the nest of a crow and the male attempts to irritate the crow. The minute the crows leave their nest to chase after the male koel away, the female koel takes the chance and lays her eggs in the crow’s nest. Thus, the latter frequently gets the previous to hatch her eggs and raise the chicks. By the time the poor crow couple understands that their labour of love has actually benefited somebody else, the koel chicks get their wings and fly away. All this while, the koels would be making merry, resting on branches of mango trees. Once the crows understand this, they abandon the chicks they had actually been raising for weeks.
In the Ambawadi location of Ahmedabad, there are numerous high neem trees. By opportunity, I experienced the behaviour of a crow deserting the kids of the koel and taped it on my electronic camera. The children were making sharp noises, like ‘chrrr chrrr chrrr….’, pleading for food with their beaks open when they saw the crow coming towards them. But the crow disregarded them and declined to feed them.
During the hot afternoons of summertime, you can hear constant tunes of koels. The male, in his harmonic voice, sings ‘koooo koooo…’ loudly and constantly to bring in a female. The female reacts with a ‘kwe kwe kwe…’ noise, rather unsightly to human beings.
The Asian Koel is loved in Indian culture for its harmonic calls and tunes. They function in numerous Bollywood tunes and motion pictures. Female vocalists with harmonic voices are frequently provided titles of ‘kokilkanthi’, suggesting the one whose voice is as harmonic as that of a koel. But paradoxically, just the male Asian Koel can make harmonic calls and sing tunes. More paradoxically, koel is a female noun in Gujarati and numerous other languages.
It is hard to sight a female koel due to the fact that of her plumes which camouflage her in tree canopies. But throughout summertime, which is their breeding season, you might discover a female koel flying or hopping from one tree to another, being chased after by a male koel. When a female koel hops from one branch to another, it appears like a small dinosaur from the film ‘Jurassic Park’. If you mimic a male’s ‘Kooooo… Kooooo…’, it will sing more loudly and with a greater pace. Kids enjoy to tease koels by mimicing their calls.
Generally, the food of Asian koels is fruits of trees like neem, peepal, papaya, and berry. But it likewise consumes bugs and eggs of other birds. Koels do not look for food on the ground. Rarely, Asian koels can be seen resting on the ground. During winter season, they sit silently in the canopy of trees for hours and sunbathe throughout the early mornings. If you observe, you will hear the noise of koel chicks, mainly in the months of October and November. In some areas of India, individuals think that the tunes of a koel are a true blessing from paradise.
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There is no danger to the Asian koel however it might be a hazard to other birds as it lays eggs in their nests by ruining the hosts’ eggs or by hurting their hatchlings. The next time you see a koel, I hope you will have the ability to determine its gender from how it looks.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened types lists Asian koel or western koel as types of least issue.
(Shefali Naik is an assistant teacher at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Ahmedabad University, and a birdwatcher)
