Acacia species

Koel came calling:  A few days back a male Koel came to our garden and perched on the almost leafless acacia nilotica tree. This tree is already the roost of a number of house sparrows.  Plac: Gwalior. MP.

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Nice pictures. The tree seems Parkinsonia aculeata from the hooked prickles.

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May be any of Acacia species,,, but doesnt look like Pakinsonia….

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The tree does not look like  Acacia nilotica . Is it a deciduous tree?  Onset of foliage and flowers will reveal its identity.

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I have never seen a male Koel..not that I would recognize one…  now what I want know is… what does a male koel sound like… is it the same KU hu…ku hu… as the female koel?

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Female Koel does not sing. The kuhu kuhu you here is male koel only.
What yu might have seen till now might be all males which look much simolar to crow but are much slender and tail feathers are longer. They have red eyes.
Female is difficult to spot. It is with barred feathers, brown or muddy color and white.
sorry flower lovers for the interaction explained here. But it is needed to know that the plants help in chemophlaging the animals.

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that is the red eye in … pictures, so he got the precise colors, wow…. nice …

AND ever since I was a child, I used to make a mean kuhu sound that would fool even the most Koel’s in the victoria memorial gardens, and they would respond… now in my old age…  so I have been mimicking the male koels all my life….  ho ho…
come to think of it I have seen these skinny crows with red eyes in leaf bereft limbs of Shalmali twigs when they first start blooming, just when there are only a few of the red flowers…. as the floers increase so do the other birds…

so that means I have seen them, just not recognized them, now I will….

PS: is it possible to buy the bird song cds? where, how?

A very interesting discussion.
The german, or say the european Koel, called Kukuck in German, does not sing kuhu but he sings Kuk Kuck. There is a very popular song /”Kukkuck, Kukkuck rufts aus dem Wald”/.  See here the notation.
upload.wikimedia.jpg
It is popular not only among children, but also german church choirs have this song in their repertoire.
I was curious to know, how the european music notation is written down on 5 (and more) lines. I attended some music lessons in Bremen university, to get preliminary knowledge of western music. The Kukkuck song was for me a “eselsbr�cke” = helping trick for remembering minor third.

Anyway while reading these mails I got curious to know why the koel sings kuhu while kukuck sings kukkuck. I searched a bit and found that kuckuck (/Cuculus canorus/) is different from Asian Koel (/Eudynamys scolopaceus/).
The distribution of Asian Koel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KoelMap.svg and that of kukuck
upload.wikimedia….
make me think that in southern part of china both birds must be present. Very interesting.