. Bombay ducks; an account of some of the every-day birds and beasts found in a naturalist's Eldorado . etting cold ! The crows realize that this is really their mostsensible course. On their return they fail to recognizethe prank which has been played upon them ; and sohatch out the strange egg along with their own. Butthe curious thing is that when the young koel ishatched, its foster-parents do not wring its neck, buttend it most carefully. Birds, when sitting on their eggs or looking aftertheir young, are mere automatons, creatures of this period they seem to cast intelligence
. Bombay ducks; an account of some of the every-day birds and beasts found in a naturalist's Eldorado . etting cold ! The crows realize that this is really their mostsensible course. On their return they fail to recognizethe prank which has been played upon them ; and sohatch out the strange egg along with their own. Butthe curious thing is that when the young koel ishatched, its foster-parents do not wring its neck, buttend it most carefully. Birds, when sitting on their eggs or looking aftertheir young, are mere automatons, creatures of this period they seem to cast intelligence to thewind, and to obey implicitly the promptings of teaches a bird to feed all the young in itsnest without questioning their origin. We may thusaccount for the care which the crow parents lavish upontheir koel foster-children. But we have yet to overcome a further is it that when the young koels first begin to fendfor themselves they are not set upon by the strangecrows of the neighbourhood and devoured ? A crow,as a rule, never loses an opportunity of attacking a. THE KOEL, OR BLACK CUCKOO, MALE INDIAN CUCKOOS 221 koel. Here would be a golden opportunity for them ;they would experience no difficulty in catching or de-stroying a newly fledged cuckoo. Some authorities have thought that during the earlierpart of their life young koels retain the crow smell, andso are let alone by the strange crows they do not think that this is the explanation. Smell does not appear to play an important part inthe life of a bird. Of all the avine senses that of smellseems to be the least well developed. So far as my observation goes, it is the male koelwhich is chiefly attacked by the crows. I do not re-member ever having seen a female chased ; she is sodifferent from the cock bird in appearance that it ispossible that the crows do not know that she is a young koels of both sexes resemble the femalein plumage, and I think that it is to this
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirdsin, bookyear1906
