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.