The Koel’s interesting feeding behaviour – favouring the farmers

[Samrat Sarkar]

Their larvae and pupae live and grow on the flesh of the ripe pointed gourds and turn into full grown fruit flies. As the other birds peck on the pointed gourds to eat them it becomes very much possible for the fruit flies to lay eggs on these partly eaten gourds. But the Asian Koels decrease this possibility to some extent as they swallow the fruit whole. Therefore they help the farmers in this respect. In this way a well known bird has been favouring the farmers through a very less known feeding habit unawarely.

References –

A. EPICUREAN TO THE CORE - M.Krishnan
This was first published on 15 March 1959 in The Sunday Statesman.

B. Bird ecology study group. Website - www.besgroup.org



Written in bengali and Photographed by Samrat Sarkar.
Translation into english by Biswajit Debnath

Equipment used – Canon EOS 7D + Canon 500mm f4 IS II USM L + Monopod and Olympus OMD EM-1 + Zuiko 12-40mm f2.8 PRO.
Place of observation – Nadia, West Bengal.
Month of observation – December, 2016


Larvae of fruit fly in ripe gourd