Appearance
* Size: A largish bird at 42 cm.⤷ Appearance: Mainly earthy brown and rufous in colour, and the long heavy tail is edged with prominently white tipped graduated cross-rayed tail feathers. An obvious relation of the coucal . Bill is hooked, bright cherry-red and yellow. Sexes are similar, but juveniles are duller and barred above.
⤷ Habitat: Largely terrestrial, open scrub and thorn jungle, deciduous secondary jungle. Singly or in pairs.
⤷ Behaviour: Stalks about amongst thickets like crow-pheasant, searching for food; insects, lizards, fallen fruits and berries, etc. Runs swiftly through undergrowth looking like mongoose. Feeble flier, but ascends trees rapidly, hopping from branch to branch with great agility, like the coucal.
⤷ Call: Normally a subdued "bzuk... bzuk" ; also an alarm call of "p'tang" with a metallic quality.
⤷ Food: A variety of insects, caterpillars and small vertebrates. It occasionally eats berries.
Distribution
All of the sub-Himalayan Indian subcontinent, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka; patchy in Pakistan and Rajasthan. Sometimes considered as three races, varying in colouration.
Defense
This cuckoo, like other Malkohas, is non-parasitic.⤷ Season - March to August
⤷ Nest: a shallow saucer of twigs lined with green leaves, in a thorn bush such as ''Euphorbia'', or sapling 2 to 7 m up.
⤷ Eggs: 2 or 3, white, with a chalky texture.
The scientific name of this bird commemorates the French botanist Jean Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour.
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