54 THE CUCKOOS. 



and all, like the home bird, are better known to the 

 ear than the eye. The most familiar of them all is 

 the Koel (Eudynamys orientalis, or honorata). It is 

 a great black fowl almost as large as a crow, with a 

 much longer tail and a green bill. That is the male. 

 The female is of a dark-greenish dusky hue, spotted 

 and banded with white. But the Koel is seldom 

 seen. It is 



No bird, but an invisible thing", 

 A voice, a mystery. 



Early in the morning, through the hottest hours 

 of the day, late in the evening, sometimes in the 

 dead of night, its loud and mellow voice calls to us 

 in a rising crescendo, " Who-be-you? Who-be-you ? 

 Who-be-you ? " And we call it the Brain-fever Bird. 

 We are strange and whimsical creatures. An old 

 English poet complains 



For here hath ben the lend cuckovv- 

 I pray to God will fire her bren. 



But the fashion has changed now, and the lend 

 cuckow has become a favourite of the poets. It is 

 the u darling of the spring," a "blessed bird," and 

 its note is a " mellow May song, clear and loud." 

 Meanwhile, its own cousin in India is the Brain-fever 

 Bird. Yet the Koel also is a darling of the spring. 

 It does not altogether leave us in winter, but at that 

 season it is silent. As the weather grows warm it 

 begins to utter its joyful note, and its spirits rise with 

 the temperature ; in May it cannot contain itself at any 

 hour of the twenty-four. One is prompted to ask, 

 What is all the excitement about ? That is easily an- 

 swered. In May the crows are busy building their 

 qests, and it is to them that the Koel intends to com- 



