23. White-browed Coucal The name ‘coucal’ sounds like ‘cuckoo’ and, in fact, coucals are a type of “cumbersome non-parasitic cuckoo”. ‘Cumbersome’ is unfair, I’d say: they’re just significantly bigger than cuckoos and so heavier. Perhaps, though, the suggestion is that they are too ‘cumbersome’ to be parasitic: well, maybe. They are, in my experience, handsome but rather shy birds, liking to stay deep within thick vegetation, bushed or wooded grassland, often near to water. One usually hears the call first: it is described as being like the sound water makes when poured out of a wine bottle, which is both a lovely sound and an enticing thought, especially in the early evening before supper. The adult male of this species has a prominent white stripe above its eye – the ‘white-brow’ of its name – which is called in Latin the supercilium; and so the official scientific name is Centropus superciliosus. The English word ‘supercilious’ means ‘behaving or looking as though one thinks (falsely) that one is superior to others’, perhaps by raising one’s eyebrows in a certain way. Well, this lovely supercilious bird is, in fact, actually superior to quite a lot of others. Birds of AFRICAMA House 51