Conservancy worker rescues Chestnut winged cuckoo in a busy part of Chennai; that resurfaces an old question about the species

The sight of this CWC in the reel held gently by Udaykumar, with bare hands and with gloved hands could not but put this writer in mind of an observation ornithologist V. Santharam had made in the context of a discussion about the CWC five years ago.  He had made the observation in an article in The Hindu titled, “How much of a passage migrant is the Chestnut winged cuckoo?” (dated November 22, 2020).. He recalled two instances of rescuing a Crested winged cuckoo in the Santhome of the 1980s when he was a resident of the neighbourhood. On both occasions, the CWC had flown into a house, and crows had launched into it. In one of those two instances, it had “crash-landed” next door in Santharam’s neighbour’s house.