love is in the air these days. With the mango season at its peak, songs of Koel (cuckoo bird) fill the air. The shy nature of Koel and its secretive behaviour has kept this bird away from eyes of researchers. It often led to the myth that it is the female Koel whose songs lure us. If you thought ‘koel gaati hai’, give it a rethink as actually it is ‘koel gaata hai.’ Scientists say that during the breeding season which lasts from April to September, the male bird sings to woo the female bird.
Professor Dinesh Bhatt, a noted bird scientist of Gurukul Kangri University of Haridwar, who is Asia representative in bird communication research, says, “Koel is very vocal during the breeding season and more often it is heard by its calls rather than being seen. Female Koel merely produces shrill kik-kik-kik, a call which is neither melodious nor continuous. It is the male that sings the familiar song kooo-ooo.”
Heading a team of researchers, Bhatt has been engaged in studying the vocalisation behaviour of Asian Koel for the past six years. Bhatt told The Pioneer, “It is strange that people usually think of the Koel as a melodious and complex singer. There are many other avian species such as magpie robin, brahmini myna, pied bush whose voice is much more melodious that koel and produce a large variety of acoustic signals. This has been revealed by spectrographic analysis in laboratory.”
It is worth mentioning here that the avian diversity and bioacoustics laboratory developed by Dinesh Bhatt at Gurukul is the one and only laboratory in India that is dedicated to the bird communication research.
After monitoring 126 nests of the house crow, scientists observed that the breeding period of the Koel strictly depends on the breeding cycle of its host- the house crow. It has only a single breeding season of about four months from late April to early August.
It forms the pair during third or fourth week of April and pair once formed remains together for the duration of breeding season. The pair of Koel performs secret courtship behaviour mostly inside the dense bushes.
Bhatt who has taken several video shots of this remarkably secret moments, reveals that the courtship in Koel consists of the male chasing the female and the chase often ends up in the female surrendering to him in the branch of a tree. Thereafter she is fed with the fruit by the male before the act of copulation.