120 BIRDS OF THE PLAINS 



pink, when first hatched out. The koel nestling has 

 one point in common with young crows, and that is a 

 large mouth of which the inside is red. This is opened 

 wide whenever a parent approaches, so that the latter 

 sees nothing but a number of yawning caverns ; thus 

 there is some excuse for its failure to distinguish between 

 the true and the spurious nestlings. 



To return to the koel who is laying her egg in the 

 momentarily deserted nest. She does not carry her egg 

 thither in her beak as the common cuckoo is said to do, 

 but sits in the nest and lays it there. Sometimes the 

 crows return before she is ready and, of course, attack 

 her, but as she can fly faster than they, they do not 

 often succeed in harming her, although there are 

 instances on record of crows mobbing female koels to 

 death. It will thus be seen that cuckolding crows is 

 dangerous work. The life of the cuckoo is not all beer 

 and skittles, and the birds seem to feel the danger of 

 their existence, for at the breeding season they 

 appear to be in a most excited state, and are manifestly 

 afraid of the crows. This being so, I am inclined to 

 think that the latter are responsible for the parasitic 

 habit of the koel. It is not improbably a case of the 

 biter bit. Crows are such aggressive birds that they are 

 quite capable of evicting any other bird from its nest if 

 this be large enough to suit their purpose. Now 

 suppose a koel to be thus evicted by force when ready 

 to lay; it is quite conceivable that she might make 

 frantic efforts to lay in her rightful nest, and if she 

 succeeded, and the crows failed to detect her egg, they 

 would hatch out her offspring. If the koels which acted 



