The male Asian koel’s pleading
koo-oo is the avian world’s answer to Cliff Richard’s
Ocean Deep. With the lockdown cutting out the whir of engines, this courtship call is now clearly heard around human lodgings.
A brood parasite, the Asian koel (
Eudynamys scolopaceus) targets the crow’s nest — and that includes the
corvus splendens, the ubiquitous house crow. The corvid being man’s commensal, the koel is also somewhat of a regular sight. Particularly between March and August, when the male pleads with his significant other, promising domestic bliss probably by drawing her attention to a ‘marked’ crow’s-nest.