78 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



game-birds, walking about and repeating " Kok, kok," 

 "kok, kok," very much as a kalij -pheasant often does. 

 Whilst uttering their common call they certainly do 

 not always raise their tails, as Jerdon affirms, but 

 usually keep them well down and jerking about 

 from side to side, at the same time depressing their 

 heads and inflating their throats, whilst the whole 

 body thrills with every successive hoot. When 

 about to call, they, like other cuckoos, squat down 

 in a hunched-up attitude, and when they have once 

 begun to cry they seem to have a great difficulty 

 in arresting the flow of the series of notes ; for, when 

 suddenly alarmed whilst calling and too much 

 afraid to go on hooting aloud, they often continue 

 the performance under their breath. When engaged 

 in courting, the male birds make a great show of 

 their plumage, erecting and spreading out their 

 great tails and extending and drooping their wings 

 before the females, who attentively and critically 

 survey the display. (Plate IV.) 



All through the course of the hot weather, pied- 

 crested cuckoos, Coccystes jacobinus, 1 may very often 

 be seen and heard. They are extremely pretty 

 birds, with bright black and white plumage, and 

 conspicuous crests, that make them look so like 

 great Otocompsas when they take up a position on a 

 prominent twig, that one can readily understand 

 why the Bengalis should regard them as "black 



1 They are very nearly of the same size as the common European cuckoo. 



