It was around 6:30 a.m. on August 16, 2025. In this part of the country, i.e., in West Bengal, the sun rises relatively early and sets early as well during this time of the year. On that day, sunrise time was at 5:14 a.m. I wake up daily at 5:30 a.m. and go out for cycling for an hour or so. But that morning, I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. Lucky that I changed my routine that day, else I would have missed one of my life’s most prized bird sightings.
We had booked our tickets to Mumbai for August 19, 2025, and, lying down in bed, I was thinking about my plans in the city. I was to visit the Hornbill House for the first time and was pretty excited about meeting the dignitaries I had known only through email or WhatsApp messaging and virtual web meetings. I also had a few more plans, like visiting the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and the hill stations of Igatpuri and Bhandardhara in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra. In 2023, I visited the Malshej Ghats, where, for the first time, I witnessed the greater flamingos and was awed by their elegance.
While all this was racing through my mind, a sound interrupted my thoughts. When I realised it was a bird call, I tried to identify it. However, I had never heard this call earlier in my locality. It was coming from the backyard. I jumped out of my bed, speculating that it belonged to some species of the Cuckoo family because the call was familiar to me. But I was hearing it for the first time in this area. I rushed to my window and tried to locate the bird. And there it was – perched on one of the branches of a mango tree in my backyard! I could not believe my eyes! It was a chestnut-winged cuckoo!
I rushed to the room where I had kept my camera, grabbed it, and ran off to my terrace to get a better view of the bird, hoping it had not flown off. To my great relief, it was still perched on the branch, perhaps waiting for me to complete my photo shoot. From the terrace, I got a very clear view of the bird. After a few shots, the bird flew to a nearby neem tree. There again, it posed for some more beautiful pictures before finally taking off.
It was a distinctive, chestnut-winged cuckoo with a long tail, a peaked black crest like a witch’s hat, bright orange throat, rusty wings, a black back, and white nape and belly. What a beautiful creature god had created! I was elated. Almost a year back, I came across an image of the species shot by a person at Shibpur in Howrah, West Bengal. Shibpur is also known for the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Botanical Garden. It is pretty evident that there are some common birds all year round in the garden. But finding the chestnut-winged cuckoo at this time of the year is truly amazing. Maybe the bird is a passing migrant. During the winter, it migrates to the southern part of India. But in August in West Bengal, it’s hot and humid as well, and not a season for the winter birds to arrive. It is not even early autumn in Bengal. Autumn arrives here in late September and stays till October. After the festival of Diwali, there is a change in the climate. The nights and early mornings become chilly, northerly winds start blowing, and the first to arrive here is the white wagtail every year, followed by others. Though IUCN has declared the conservation status of the chestnut-winged cuckoo as Least Concern, sighting the bird in this part of the country in August is quite rare.
Since returning from Mumbai, I have always stayed alert lest I hear the bird’s call again. I am still waiting for it to come. In the past, I have been fortunate enough to have many migratory birds visit my backyard, including the Taiga flycatcher and orange-breasted pigeon, but this one has been the most unusual visitor till now.
Written by: Alok Ganguly, BNHS Member and bird enthusiast.