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Asian Koel | Eudynamys scolopaceus
Indische koel | Koel común
A large, long-tailed cuckoo from South Asia, whose glossy black male and brown-and-white spotted female look completely different. In the region it is a scarce but increasing visitor to northern Oman and the United Arab Emirates, where it lives mainly in gardens and date-palm groves; elsewhere in Arabia it is a vagrant.
Voice
The male gives a loud, rising ko-EEL, repeated ever higher and faster, often before dawn and also at night. The female has a shrill, bubbling kik-kik-kik-kik. Often silent in winter, but in spring calling males can also be heard in Arabia.
Recording: Lars Lachmann — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Large and slender, with a long, rounded tail and a stout, pale green bill; the eye is bright red. The male is entirely glossy blue-black. The female is dark brown above with dense white and buff spots and bars, the crown streaked rufous; underparts white with heavy dark streaks on the throat and bars on breast and belly. Juveniles resemble the female but are blacker above, with a dark eye. Shy; often sits hidden in dense foliage and flies fast and straight.
Confusion species
A male can resemble a House Crow (Corvus splendens), but is slimmer, with a much longer tail, a green bill and a red eye. Black Drongo (Dicrurus macrocercus) is also black, but much smaller, with a forked tail and a dark bill. The spotted female cannot be confused with any other bird in the region; a Common Blackbird (Turdus merula) is much smaller and unspotted.
Habitat
Gardens and parks with dense, fruiting trees, date-palm groves, orchards and irrigated copses, also mangroves and vegetated coasts. It feeds mainly on fruit and berries, such as figs and the fruits of ornamental trees, supplemented with insects. In its core range it parasitises mainly crows, with House Crow the most important host.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
In the region scarce but increasing in northern Oman (the Batinah coast, Muscat, Masirah) and the United Arab Emirates (mainly the east coast and Al Ain), mostly from October to April, with a few summering; breeding with House Crow as host is suspected there but barely documented. A vagrant to Kuwait (first record in February 2009), Qatar, Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia. Beyond the region from Iran and Pakistan through India and Sri Lanka to southern China and Indonesia.
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In winter, search parks and gardens with fig trees along the Batinah coast and in Muscat, or on Masirah, and listen early in the morning for the rising ko-EEL. Females more often give themselves away by their spotted silhouette when flying out of a fruiting tree.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened and very common in its core range. In Arabia the number of records is increasing, possibly linked to the spread of House Crow and the many new gardens and parks.
Scientific name
Eudynamys scolopaceus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Cuculus scolopaceus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Eudynamys was introduced in 1827 by Vigors & Horsfield. Eudynamys is Greek, from eu 'well' and dunamis 'power'. scolopaceus is Latin for 'snipe-like', from scolopax 'snipe'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bengal, India and Bangladesh.