Indian Cuckoo
The Indian Cuckoo is a brood parasite. It lays its single egg mostly in the nests of drongos and crows. It removes and eats an egg from the host nest before laying its own. The breeding season varies from May to July in northern China, March to August in India, January to June in Burma and January to August in the Malay Peninsula. This is a medium sized cuckoo with both sexes alike. It has grey upperparts while the underside has broad black barring. The tail is barred with a broad subterminal dark band and a white tip. Young birds have white markings on the crown and white chin and throat contrasting with a dark face. Juveniles are browner and have broad white tips to the head and wing feathers. The eye-ring is gray to yellow (a feature shared with the Common Hawk-Cuckoo). The iris is light brown to reddish. The female differs from the male in being slightly paler grey on the throat and in having more brown on the breast and tail. The barring on the belly is narrower than in the male. Nestlings have an orange-red mouth and yellow flanges to the gape.
The call is loud with four notes. They have been transcribed as "orange-pekoe", "bo-ko-ta-ko", "crossword puzzle" or "one more bottle". In Bengali, it is interpreted as "bou-kotha-kao", "Bride, please speak". Very little variation is noted between regions although the song in China is said to rise at the end. In the Kangra Valley of India, the call is interpreted as the soul of the dead shepherd uttering "where is my sheep". In China, one of the names ( means "four-note cuckoo". They are locally common in the breeding season with as many as a calling bird for every 2 square km in northern India.
They feed on hairy caterpillars and other insects but sometimes take fruits. They usually feed on the upper canopy, gleaning insects, sometimes making aerial sallies for flying termites or rarely even by hovering lower near the ground.
Juvenile Indian cuckoo a winter visitor in the month of October 2017
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