226 BOMBAY DUCKS 
safe for the sportsman to lay his money on either the 
little insect or the great fowl. The grasshopper often 
doubles, and is of course followed by the coucal, which, 
when making a sharp turn, often expands one wing, 
using it as a steering apparatus, The bird is said also 
to eat lizards and snakes. He possibly eats small 
frogs, for I have often seen crow-pheasants wading in 
water. 
The nest is an interesting object. It is usually 
situated in the midst of some impenetrable thicket, for 
a coucal dislikes having his family affairs pryed into, 
It is a great structure, about the size of a football, 
composed chiefly of sticks. It is roofed in and has the 
entrance at the side. In spite of its size, it is usually 
so well concealed that it is not an easy thing to 
discover. Sometimes, when one knows for certain that 
there is a nest in a thicket, it is impossible to find that 
nest without pulling down the greater part of the bush 
round about it. I once spent a couple of hours looking 
in vain for a nest which I knew to be in a thick hedge; 
then I told off two peons to find it without doing 
any damage to the hedge. They professed their 
inability to discover it, but I do not believe they made 
very sustained efforts to find it; I rather fancy they 
regarded the duty as beneath the dignity of their 
position! Whether this was so or not, it is certain that 
the crow-pheasant is an adept at concealing his home. 
The coucal is usually described in works on natural 
history as a shy bird. It is certainly exceedingly shy 
in Madras, much more so than it is in Northern India. 
The reason of this difference in behaviour is not ap- 
