sting season is now at its height for the white-necked storks,
the koels and their dupes--the house-crows, also for the various
babblers and their deceivers--the brain-fever birds and the pied
crested cuckoos. The tailor-birds, the ashy and the Indian
wren-warblers, the brahminy mynas, the wire-tailed swallows, the
amadavats, the sirkeer cuckoos, the pea-fowl, the water-hens, the
common and the pied mynas, the cuckoo-shrikes and the orioles are all
fully occupied with nursery duties. The earliest of the brain-fever
birds to be hatched have left the nest. Like all its family the young
hawk-cuckoo has a healthy appetite. In order to satisfy it the
unfortunate foster-parents have to work like slaves, and often must
they wonder why nature has given them so voracious a child. When it
sees a babbler approaching with food, the cuckoo cries out and flaps
its wings vigorously. Sometimes these completely envelop the parent
bird while it is thrusting food into the yellow mouth of the cuckoo.
The breast of the newly-fledged brain-fever bird is covered with dark
brown drops, so that, when seen from below, it looks like a thrush
with yellow legs. Its cries, however, are not at all thrushlike.

Many of the wire-tailed swallows, minivets and white-browed fantail
flycatchers bring up a second brood during the rains. The loud
cheerful call of the last is heard very frequently in July.

Numbers of young bee-eaters are to be seen hawking at insects; they
are distinguishable from adults by the dullness of the plumage and the
fact that the median tail feathers are not prolonged as bristles.

Very few crows emerge from the egg before the 1st of July, but, during
the last week in June, numbers of baby koels are hatched out. The
period of incubation for the koel's egg is shorter than that of the
crow, hence at the outset the baby koel steals a march on his
foster-brothers. Koel nestlings, when they first emerge from the egg,
differ greatly in appearance from baby crows. The skin of the koel is
black, that of crow is pink for the first two days of its existence,
but it grows darker rapidly. The baby crow is the bigger bird and has
a larger mouth with fleshy sides. The sides of the mouth of the young
koel are not fleshy. The neck of the crow nestling is long and the
head hangs down, whereas the koel's neck is short and the bird carries
its head huddled in its shoulders. Crows nest high up in trees, these
facts are therefore best observed by sen