Kishoreda was a Grey bellied Cuckoo

Kishore Kumar was a Grey-bellied Cuckoo! What are your favourite Kishoreda songs? Drop them in the comments. Comic from Roundglass Sustain celebrating monsoon and the bird of the season!

To read a similar strip about Mohammad Rafi and the Magpie Robin, visit Roundglass Sustain here.

Nature Gratitude Week

A Nature Gratitude Week special from my column with Roundglass Sustain. 

Brood Parasitism and Going Cuckoo

The Common Hawk-Cuckoo, also called the Brainfever (Papeeha), is a brood parasite of a common backyard bird: the Jungle Babbler. Spring is the time to look out for hungry cuckoo chicks pestering their foster parents! 

Comic from my column with Roundglass Sustain.

Virtual Birding Checklist

What's the unlikeliest virtual birding you have done? Comic from my column with The Hindu Weekend Magazine today, featuring accidentally, the work of Konkona Sen-Sharma, Appu N. Bhattathiri, Manmohan Desai / Amitabh Bachhan, and Shekhar Gupta.

Cuckoo Migration World Record

A satellite-tagged Common Cuckoo recently set the new record for migration by terrestrial birds by flying from India to Yemen in just two days! Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how this was achieved. Comic from my column with Roundglass Sustain.

Cuckoo Chartbusters for your Monsoon Playlist

It's monsoon and cuckoo compositions are topping all music charts! Which one is your favourite? (Mine has to be the Grey-bellied!)

Comic from my column with Pune Mirror.

Travel Blogs by Birds

Featuring five travel bloggers from the bird world in my column with Sunday Mid-day.

Top Ten Recommendations for Migratory Birds Visiting India

Are you a migratory bird visiting India and looking for recommendations? Well, look no further than Green Humour! (The birds in the comic are: European Bee-eater, Montagu's Harrier, Crab Plover, Rosy Starling, Indian Blue Robin, Grey Wagtail (with his guide Plum-headed Parakeet), Siberian Stonechat (with a performing Indian Peafowl), Cinereous Vulture, Steppe Eagle, Eurasian Griffon, Pied Cuckoo, Greater Flamingo, Marsh Sandpiper, Western Reef Egret and Pied Avocet. 

Comic from my column with Sunday Mid-day. Prints available on my webstore here. (For orders within India, e-mail me on rohanchakcartoonist@gmail.com)

Some Indian Birds Decked Up for the Big Pride March

Green Humour congratulates India's LGBTQ community for finally winning the battle to recognize gay sex as legal, after decades of oppression and injustice. Let's celebrate this step towards building a more progressive and inclusive nation, as our wildlife has always been doing!

Death and Nature

My mother Sulabha Chakravarty, a lawyer, journalist, teacher and environmentalist died in a car accident on the 19th of August, 2018. My family and I thank everyone who sent help, love and prayers our way, and stood by us through this hard time, from the bottom of our hearts. Of course, this includes both human beings and fauna!

Binge Watching

Did you know that you can binge-watch even without being a Netflix user? From my column with Mid-day today.

Cuckoo Fathers Day Greeting

Meet the Pied Cuckoo, the harbinger of monsoons and a sneaky nest parasite! The comic appears in my column with Sunday Mid-Day today.

A happy Fathers' Day to all fathers (and foster fathers) tame and wild! Prints are available as posters and greetings on my webstore here. Orders within India are available as A3 and A2 size prints, which can be placed by emailing me on rohanchakcartoonist@gmail.com.

Know Your Cuckoo Songs

For birdwatchers, monsoon is cuckoo-season! Easier heard than seen, cuckoo songs can be quite a puzzle to solve for the novice. Cuckoos become vocal during late summer and monsoon because this is the time they seek mates and breed. This also coincides with the breeding seasons of their host species, such as prinias, tailorbirds and babblers. Coucals however, make their own nests.

Here is a sing-along cuckoo chart that would help bird lovers with some quick on and off-field differentiation. (Please note that Malkohas have been left out because they are rarely vocal).

(Canvas for coffee mug)

The prints are available as A3 size posters and coffee mugs that can be ordered by e-mailing me on rohanchakcartoonist@gmail.com (mentioning the number of prints, your postal address and phone number). For orders outside of India, prints can be purchased from my online store here. Oh, and as I share this with you, a Grey-bellied Cuckoo puts up a concert in my backyard!

Prices for orders within India-

A2 Posters (loose)- Rs. 1200 each

Mounted Posters (A3- Individual species and compilation)- Rs. 2000

Loose Posters (A3- Individual species and compilation)- Rs. 500 for the first copy and Rs. 200 for the second copy onwards

Coffee Mug (Compilation)- Rs. 850
Tshirts (Compilation)- Rs. 1200

The first rains

Monsoons are generally not considered a birding season, but in India, it does fill birders with much anticipation and excitement. The arrival of the Pied Cuckoo in India coincides with that of the monsoon winds and hence it is revered as the harbinger of rains. A birdwatcher's delight, this bird is an absolute thrill to track in the monsoons. It is a brood parasite that nests around this time of the year, parasitizing the nests of babblers. Pairs can often be seen courting each other, whistling a loud but melodious "peeu-peeu". Hairy caterpillars are the Pied Cuckoo's favourite food, and it is quite a sight to watch the bird tackle one, so I've drawn a caricature of the Pied Cuckoo with its breakfast-

The comic appeared in The Hindu Business Line this weekend and is available as an A3/A4 print, and so is the caricature. Mail me at rohanchakcartoonist@gmail.com to book your prints or purchase your prints online here.

Also have a look at Migrant Watch's Pied Cuckoo Campaign that attempts to engage birdwatchers to study the migration patterns of the Pied Cuckoo.

The Harbinger

The Pied/ Jacobin Cuckoo is considered to be the harbinger of monsoons in India due to the time of its arrival. It has also found representation in Indian mythology as 'Chatak', a bird with a beak on its head, waiting for the monsoons to quench its thirst. Migrant watch's 'Pied Cuckoo Campaign' aims at tracking down this very special bird's migratory pattern. If you are an Indian birding enthusiast, you can contribute by logging on to www.migrantwatch.in and recording your sightings.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Smart Nesting!

"Nest parasitism or brood parasitism" is a phenomenon in which a bird raids another bird's nest, destroys its eggs and lays its own eggs in the nest. The cuckoo is an 'interspecific' nest parasite. It usually lays its eggs in the nests of babblers and crows. the 'host' species, i.e whose nests have been raided, incubate the cuckoo egg and the raise the cuckoo chick as their own, acting as foster parents to the cuckoo offspring.
Brood parasitism is also seen in various insects, fish, reptiles and other birds such as some species of duck, cowbirds and honeyguides.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.