Koel variations

["Geoffrey Dabb" <>]

For the females HANZAB gives a spectrum from ‘pale’ to ‘dark’, those adjectives referring only to the head colour.  Below is a bird snapped here this morning, under the prunus shrub it was sharing with a male, with a different female at almost the same time and place last year.  Even allowing for the light, last year’s bird is rather more brownish, also more heavy-bodied (based on a large number of photos of both).  However both females would rank as ‘intermediate’ according to the HANZAB scale.