Asian Koel (male)

Asian Koel Koh Phangan Thailand

Koh Phangan, Thailand

The Asian koel is a succssful member of the cuckoo family found across India, China and Southeast Asia.

Habitat

It is an arboreal species found in light woodland whether on the edge of dense forest or around cultivated land. It has adapted to urban enviroments and frequents parks and gardens.

Feeding

The Asian koel is an omnivore and its diet consist of insects, small vertebrates and eggs as well as a large quantities of fruit.  They have a very large gape and can swallow correspondingly large, hard fruits.

Breeding

A brood parasite the Asian koel lays a single egg in the nests of birds such as the jungle crow and the house crow. The female Asian koel may remove a host's egg before laying but the chick sometimes leaves the eggs and young of the host parents in the nest rather than evicting them. This may be becaue a host crow is larger than a koel and the nest is deep. Adult female koels will occasionally  feed koel chicks in the hosts' nests a behaviour seen in some other brood parasite species.

Wildfile Specials 
  • The name koel is onmatopoeic.  Listen to the bird above and you will appreciate the connection between name and call. 
  • The Asian koel feeds on the fruit of cascabela thevetia which is toxic for mammals.
  • When the koel chick first hatches it calls like its crow host.
  • Asian koels are pioneers.  They were among the first birds to recolonise islands around Krakatoa after the great eruption of 1883.  They arrived in Singapore in the 1980's and are now a common bird.  Populations have travelled as far as Australia,
  • The bird is a widely used symbol in Indian and Nepali poetry.
  • In Sanskrit literature dated around  2000 BC it is referred to it as Anya-Vapa which has been translated as "that which was raised by others", the very first written referene to a brood parasite. 
  • It is the state bird of Punducherry, India
  • At one time, Asian koels were very popular in India as cagebirds, often fed on boiled rice and living to a healthy old age of 14 years.
  • The female Asian Koel has a very different appearance to her male companion.
Asian Koel (female)

 

 

  Asian Koel (female)

   Penang, Malaysia