One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

I am aware that the title has been plagiarised from the famous movie  with the same title, but the contents of this Blog is no "Cuckoo" story of that type.

On a cool Sunday morning in November 2010, I spotted a young new bird sitting on the "Muringa" tree visible from our kitchen balcony. Couple of dark crows swooped in and I thought that this was the end of the young bird. I tried chasing away the crows by shouting aloud. To my surprise, one of the crows started feeding the young bird. The young bird followed the crows from tree to tree. At a later date, I found that there are two young Cuckoos.

I got assistance from a friend of Mithun in identifying the bird as Indian Cuckoo. Details about this bird can be seen by clicking the link given below.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Cuckoo

 A few photographs of the young birds and their real parents amplifies the above mentioned entry in Wikipedia.

 This image is during the first sighting. See the colour of the eyes at this stage. It matches with those of crows. Further research showed that the eye colour is one thing that makes the difference to the crows; that is whether they look after the young bird or attack it. The related article was not categorical about the time taken for the eye colour change.

 This one is after a gap of about three months. The bird is still young. The eye colour has started to change to red. The description in Wikipedia almost matches in all respects, even regarding the mouth colour

 This is one of the real parent birds that was escorting the young one during the second sighting.

Notice the eye colour and compare it with the parent bird's.









This was a learning session for me. Hope that you also enjoyed it.