----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COUNTRY NOTEBOOK : M. KRISHNAN : An in-between Bird : The Sunday Statesman ; 16 February 2020
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COUCAL


" THE COUCAL belongs to the Cuckoo tribe : it is one of those ground-cuckoos that do not foist their eggs on other birds, but laboriously build nests and hatch and their young. It is quite a common bird, being found both in forests and in countryside, and even in cities where there are trees and bushes, and it is by no means inconspicuous, a big blackbird the size of a crow, with a heavy corvine bill and a long, broad tail with the back and rounded wings alone chestnut.

The name by which it is known to many people, CROW PHEASANT, reflects both its long tail and addiction to ground cover. Not that it walks easily, as a pheasant does: it is much more at home in trees, but it is often to be found in low bushes and even on ground, and given to hiding in bush cover. But even when when it is hiding, its low booking voice gives it away.

In spite of being so common, most people hardly seem to know it.They have the oddest notions about it, and think it is some sort of crow not much given to flying. People will believe anything you may tell them about it - I myself believed that it is a lucky omen to see a Coucal when setting out to do anything. It is an "age-old superstition" entirely of my own manufacture, and in places where I established it 30 years ago, they now tell me this is an immemorial traditional belief!

Perhaps the oddest thing said about the bird by one of our official wildlife experts, when I was showing a party of foreigners (one of whom is a knowledgeable ornithologist) around a sanctuary. A Coucal happened to fly across the forest road ahead of their jeep, and the expert, wishing to impress his guests, turned solemnly to them: " That is the only endemic pheasant known in South India" he informed them, " and its modification is still a mystery".

But of course its nesting is no mystery. It builds a big, rounded nest deep inside a bush or a bamboo clump, and hunt painstakingly for grasshoppers and other plump insects with which to feed its young. Apparently, such insects stripped off the chitinous limbs and other hard parts are both digestible and nourishing- even the grain-loving finches feed their nestlings on such prey.

As bird-watchers keen on garden birds know, the Coucal is a voracious and omnivorous feeder. It lives on fruits, such insect or reptilian prey as it can catch, and eggs and young of other and smaller birds - it is an inveterate nest-robber.

Its call is a deep, sonorous, repeated hoot, which Dewar compares to the voices of some owls, but I do not think there is much in common - owls have less less sonorous and metallic hoots, and to my ear the call nearest the Coucal's is no bird voice but the joyous, early morning hoop of the langur, though of course the two are once distinguishable.

There is the only call of the bird you will find recorded in textbooks, but it has another and more private voice for intimate occasions. Waiting for a sambar stag in a primitive but more effective hide out a mango tree, I had the privilege of eavesdropping on a pair of Coucals seated on a branch just below me. They sat in close company, and indulged in a low, guttural conversation, punctuated with side way tilts of their heads, a muttering irresistibly reminiscent of two querulous old men grumbling together! They must have been a courting pair, I think, and what I overheard was their whispered sweet nothings to each other! "

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 19 August 1973