It does not, however, leave its foster-parents when able to fly. It sits on the edge of the nest and makes laudable, if ludicrous, efforts at cawing. The crows continue feeding it long after it has left the nest, looking after it with the utmost solicitude. A young koel is somewhat lacking in intelligence; it seems unable to distinguish its foster-parents from any other crow, for it opens its mouth at the approach of every crow, evidently expecting to be fed.
The natives of the Punjab assert that the hen koel keeps her eye on the crow’s nest in which she has laid her egg or eggs during the whole of the time that the young cuckoo is in it, and takes charge of her babe after it leaves the nest. This assertion appears to be incorrect. I have never seen a koel feeding anything but itself. Moreover, the koel lays four or five eggs, and these are not usually all deposited in one nest. It would therefore be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for the hen to keep an eye on each of her eggs.
In view of the hatred which crows display towards koels in general, naturalists have expressed surprise that the young koels are not mobbed directly they leave the nest. Their plumage differs in no way from that of the adult. It has been suggested that young koels retain the crow smell for a considerable time after they are fledged. This I cannot accept. The olfactory organ of birds is but slightly developed. Indeed, I am inclined to wonder whether birds have any sense of smell. The truth of the matter is that crows look after their foster-children most carefully for several weeks after they have left the nest, and see that no strange crow harms them.
THE COMMON DOVE OF INDIA
The dove family ought to have become extinct ages ago, if all that orthodox zoologists tell us about the fierce struggle for existence be true. They form a regular “Thirteen Society.” They do everything they should not do, they disobey every rule of animal warfare, they fall asleep when sitting exposed on a telegraph wire, they build nests in all manner of foolish places, their nests are about as unsafe as a nursery can possibly be, and they flatly decline to lay protectively coloured eggs—their white eggs are a standing invitation to bird robbers to indulge, like the Cambridge crew of 1906, in an egg diet; yet, in spite all of these foolhardy acts, doves flourish like the green bay tree. This is a fact of which I require an explanation before I can accept all the doctrines of the Neo-Darwinian school.
There are so many species of dove in India that when speaking of them one must perforce, unless one be writing a great monograph, confine oneself to two or three of the common species. I propose to-day to talk about our three commonest Indian doves, that is to say, the spotted dove (Turtur suratensis), the Indian ring-dove (Turtur risorius), and the little brown dove (Turtur cambayensis). I make no apology for discoursing upon these common species. I contend that we in India know so very little about even our everyday birds that it is a needless expenditure of energy to seek out the rarer species and study their habits; we have plenty to learn about those that come into our verandahs and coo to us.
The curious distribution of our common Indian doves has not, so far as I know, been explained. In very few places are all three common. One or other of them is usually far more abundant than the others, and this one is usually the spotted dove. It is the commonest dove of Calcutta, of Madras, of Travancore, of Tirhoot, of Lucknow, but not of Lahore or Bombay or the Deccan. Why is this? Why is it that, whereas the Deccan is literally overrun by the ring- and the little brown dove, one can go from Bombay to Malabar without meeting one of these species, but seeing thousands of the spotted dove?
The only explanation that I can offer of this phenomenon is that the spotted dove is the most pugnacious and the most pushing; that where he chooses to settle down he ousts the other species of dove more or less completely; but he, fortunately for the other species, does not choose to settle down in all parts of India. He objects to dry places. Hence he is not seen at Lahore or in the Deccan, or in the drier parts of the United Provinces, such as Agra, Muttra, Etawah, and Cawnpore.
This is only a theory of mine, and a theory in favour of which I am not able to adduce very much evidence, since my personal knowledge of India is confined to some half-a-dozen widely separated places. Moreover, this theory does not explain the absence of the spotted dove from Bombay. I should be very glad to know if there are any other moist parts of India where the spotted dove is not the most abundant of the cooing family.
The nest of the dove is a subject over which most ornithologists have waxed sarcastic. A more ramshackle structure does not exist; yet the absurd thing is that doves are most particular about the materials they use.