PARASITIC HABITS OF THE INDIAN KOEL. 779 



and on the 3rd one of the crow's eggs had hatched out, one of the others was 

 broken and in it a dead crow fully formed. This we removed. On July 4th 

 there was no change in the contents of the nest, the young koel being now in 

 what I may perhaps call the porcupine stage. On the 5th and 6th there was 

 still no change in the contents of the nest ; the white tips of the koel's feathers 

 were now showing. On arriving at the tree on the 7th it was at once obvious 

 that some one had been up it. This person had removed the crow nestling and 

 the egg, so that the nest now contained the koel alone. On July itth it became 

 apparent that the young koel was a hen. On July 16th she had left the nest 

 and was sitting on the tree. We saw no more of her after that. 



Nest Number VII. 

 This contained on June 15th one crow's egg. On the 18th it contained 

 two, three on 20th, and four on 22nd. But on the 24th the egg laid on the 

 18th had disappeared, so that the nest now contained only three crow's eggs, 



On July 3rd the egg of the 15th hatched out. On that day I put into 

 the nest two young koels, two and three days old, taken from another distant 

 nest containing two young koels and one crow. We had had this nest under 

 observation for a couple of days and when we first came upon it the crow's egg 

 was still unhatched. As the nest was too far off to enable me to inspect it 

 daily, I removed the two young koels to nest number VII, so that it now 

 contained two koels, one crow, and two crow's eggs. 



On July 5th the egg of the 20th yielded its chick and the egg of the 

 22nd did likewise on July 6th, so that the nest contained two koels and three 

 crows. There was no alteration on the 7th, but when we visited the nest on 

 the 8th the two smaller crows had completely disappeared, and as the arrange- 

 ment of branches which we left appeared to be undisturbed, it is most unlikely 

 that any person had removed those young birds. I am not able to explain 

 their disappearance. On July 9th the nest still contained one crow and two 

 koels ; the first was the biggest of the three, but not so far developed as the 

 larger koel. He and the younger koel were very clamorous. When lowered, 

 the young koel raised itself, flapped its fore limbs, opened its mouth, and 

 squeaked. By the 16th the crow was far bigger than either his two foster 

 brothers, but not nearly so far advanced. Both the koels were considerably 

 barred, the bars of one being white and those of the other rufous. 



The bird with the white bars had several of these in each of her tail feathers 

 while the tail feathers of the other bird were only tipped with rufous, hence 

 I was of opinion that the latter was a cock. But of this I am now not so 

 sure, for when I returned from the Hills on July 30th, both of the koels had 

 left the nest and flew away when the chaprassi ascended the tree. He 

 declares that they were both hens. Unfortunately I did not obtain a 

 sufficiently good view of them to express an opinion on this point. 



I shall return to this matter later. On the 30th the young crow was still in 

 the nest, but as the climber ascended the tree it fluttered out and dropped, but 

 u anaged to catch hold of a branch in its descent and thus save itself. During 

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