PLAYING CUCKOO 115 



crow. When first hatched the koel has a black skin, 

 the crow a pink one. The mouth of the crow nestHng 

 is an enormous triangle with great fleshy flaps at the 

 side ; the mouth of the koel is much smaller and lacks 

 the flaps. The feathers arise very differently in each 

 species, and whereas those of the crow are black, those 

 of the koel are tipped with russet in the cock and white 

 in the hen. 



In another nest containing a young koel (put there 

 by me) and two crow's eggs, I placed a paddy bird's 

 {Ardeola grayii) Qgg^ hoping that the gallant crow would 

 hatch it out and appreciate the many-sidedness of her 

 family. She hatched out the egg all right, at least 

 I believe she did. I saw it in the nest the day before the 

 young paddy bird was due ; but when I visited the nest 

 the following morning neither egg nor young bird was 

 there. It would seem that the crow did not appreciate 

 the appearance of the latest addition to the family and 

 destroyed it. It is, of course, possible that the young 

 koel declined to associate with such a neighbour and 

 killed it ; but I think that the crow was the culprit, for 

 I had previously placed a paddy bird nestling, four 

 days old, in a crow's nest containing only young crows, 

 and the paddy bird had similarly disappeared. 



These, then, are the main facts which my game of 

 cuckoo has brought to light. They are not so decisive 

 as I had expected. They seem to indicate that the 

 actions of birds with eggs or young are not quite so 

 mechanical as I had supposed. Were they not largely 

 mechanical a crow would never hatch out a koel's egg, 

 nor would it feed the young koel when hatched out ; it 



