EUDYNAMYS honokata. 253 



peculiar scale-like call. It frequents groves of trees, compounds, wooded knolls in paddy-fields, and jungle 

 near water or bordering open ground. It is a skulking bird, loving concealment in thick trees and tangled 

 bushes, and delighting in the shady foliage of trees which are matted at the top with creepers. It moves 

 actively about when flushed and driven into a tree, hopping along the slanting limbs, and springing from branch 

 to branch till it gains the other side, and then escapes to a further place of concealment. It is the male which 

 utters the peculiar note ku-il, ku-il, or koijo koyo, which mounts each time higher and higher and increases in 

 vigour until it fairly rings through the woods ; he is usually perched in some thick tree, and when he has 

 finished his vociferation one or two females may be seen issuing from their places of concealment and flying 

 towards him. This cry may often be heard at night. Adult males seem usually to be in the minority, or else 

 they do not move about as much as the other sex, many more of which may always be seen in the course of a 

 day's ramble. 



The Koel is almost exclusively a fruit-eating species, and feeds greedily on all sorts of luscious seeds and 

 berries ; from the stomach of a male I once took two entire nuts of the Kitool-palm : it is fond of the banyan- 

 fruit, but in Ceylon does not much affect locabties in which this tree grows. Blyth states that it ejects the 

 large seeds of any fruit that it has eaten by the mouth : he syllabizes another note uttered by the male as 

 ho-whu-ho ; but I have not heard this. Both sexes are much more noisy in May and June than at other times 

 as this is the breeding-season in Ceylon. 



Layard remarks that the natives so much admire the note of this bird, that their poets compare it to the 

 voices of their mistresses, which, however, as he aptly continues, cannot be very soft, for the Koel can be heard 

 a mile away ! 



Nidification. — In the Western Province this parasitic Cuckoo breeds in May and June, laying nearly 

 always in the nest of Corvus levaillanti (the Black Crow), and not in that of the smaller citizen species, as in 

 India, for the simple reason that the latter does not inhabit the jungle to which the Koel resorts to rear its 

 young. I am indebted to Mr. Mac Vicar for many valuable notes on the nesting of this bird, a number of 

 whose eggs he has taken in the Western Province, and more especially in the vicinity of Kajsbawa. The 

 following are the particulars of four nests found in the months of May and June, 1875 : — 



(1) Eggs : 4 Crow's ; 4 Koel's. 



Differed considerably, as if they had been laid by different birds. Two were of a pale green ground, 

 spotted rather thickly with longitudinally-directed markings of olive-brown, confluent slightly round the 

 obtuse end, and laid over numerous blotches of lilac or pale bluish grey : dimensions, T24 by 093 inch and 

 1*2 by 09 inch. The other two were of a light brown colour, covered with small reddish- brown and purple 

 spots : dimensions, l - 35 by Tl inch and 1*34 by 1"0 inch. 



(2) Eggs : 5 Crow's ; 3 Koel's. 



Ground-colour olivaceous green, blotched and marked (sparingly at the small end) with two shades of 

 olive-brown over numerous smaller spottings of indistinct bluish grey; the markings almost confluent at the 

 obtuse end. 



(3) Eggs : 2 Crow's ; 4 Koel's. 



Two distinct types. Ground-colour of two olive-brownish grey, marked all over, but mostly at the large 

 end, with reddish brown, over numerous smaller spots of bluish grey ; at the obtuse end the spots are large, 

 but all over the rest of the surface in the form of small specks : dimensions, P32 by TO and T38 by TO. The 

 other two were of a greenish ground-colour, speckled with purplish and brown spots, mostly towards the obtuse 

 end, where the markings become confluent : dimensions, l - 36 by - 95 inch and T25 by 096 inch. 



(4) Eggs : 2 Crow's ; 2 Koel's. 



In shape very stumpy. Colour dark olive-green, spotted with dark reddish brown, confluent round the 

 obtuse end. Dimensions, 1T8 by 092 inch and 1*15 by 095 inch. 

 The average size of these eggs was T31 by 0"95 inch. 

 In India the Black Crow lays too early for the Koel; and my lamented friend Mr. Anderson* remarks 



* In Mr. Hume's ' Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds ' will be found a lengthy extract from a paper by this observant 

 naturalist on the nesting of the Koel. 



