Greater Coucal
Deep resonant calls , ‘coop, coop, coop’ often heard in the warm morning hours in our garden. The call is loud with good bass, enough to make one feel it emanating from some musical instrument. And just as a peacock scream is repeated by its fellow mates at different locations within the vicinity, similarly this sound is also carried forward to distant birds until the sound fades away. Acting on a childish instinct, I had tried imitating the call and it responded. This continued for a while till I saw the gardener from the neighboring house prying to see the new kid in the area.
This shy bird remained hidden from my view for many days
before I spotted it hopping cautiously from the branches of a mango tree to Shirish.
A fairly large bird with black head, purple black upper mantle and undersides, dark
copper brown wings , ruby red eyes, short thick black beak and long black
feathery tail. It is a very common bird in the Indian subcontinent and is an
inhabitant of almost all states of the country. With an appearance similar to a
crow but the size that of a pheasant, it is also known as ‘Crow Pheasant’.
Greater Coucal belongs to Cuculidae (cuckoo) family but unlike
its famous cousin ‘Koel’, it does not lay its eggs in the nests of other birds.
Instead, this monogamous bird builds its own nest around 6 meters away from the
ground either on a bamboo clump, inside the tangles of a dense creeper or as in
our garden, in a covered crown of a papaya tree. It is a poor flier and is
often seen moving around in vegetation and foraging for insects, caterpillars,
bird eggs, nestlings, snails, squirrels and some varieties of fruits.
Few months back, while having my evening tea and casually admiring my
bottle brush tree in full bloom, I saw a baby squirrel jump from one of its lower
branches. Almost immediately a Greater Coucal quickly hopped by clumsily chasing the
baby. Since the baby had already reached the ground, I was a bit relieved that
it can now scamper away to safety. Unfortunately, the Coucal dropped to the
ground, still missing the baby but the squirrel tried to climb back probably to
its screaming mother, when just then the Coucal flew onto it and grabbed it in its claws. With at least 2
couples of greater coucal nesting in my garden, am sure it must be a regular affair in my backyard, but we are not always lucky enough to watch it.
Traditionally this bird had a significant medicinal value. Its
flesh was consumed as a cure for tuberculosis and pulmonary ailments. Traditional
medicine practitioners believed that the bird used a special grass or root that
had magical healing properties. The only way to identify the grass was to throw
it into a river- the grass has a property of flowing against the flow of the
river. Unfortunately so many coucal nests would have landed up in the river in
a effort to validate this myth!!
Greater Coucal has a permanent place in Indian mythology
too. In the tale of Krishna and Sudama , when poor Sudama was travelling to
meet his childhood friend Krishna at Dwarka, he had sighted a Greater Coucal. Sudama
was relieved of all his woes after meeting his friend. It is for reasons such
as these that sighting the bird is considered a good omen and hence it remains protected.
Hindi Name : Mahoka
Gujarati Name: Hokko, Ghumkiyo, Ghoyaro
Comments
Post a Comment