32 GARDEN AND AVIARY BIRDS. 
In disposition the Drongos are very different from 
the sociable birds I have been describing, being fierce 
and quarrelsome. They usually sit alone, and wage 
war against intruders whom they disapprove of in a 
very noticeable way. They build high up in trees, the 
nest being open and cup-shaped, and the eggs are pale 
with reddish spots. 
There are not many species of Drongos, though they 
are widely distributed in the warm regions of the Old 
World, and here it will only be necessary to deal with 
two of them. 
THE Kinc-Crow (Dicrurus ater) is, with his jet-black 
plumage and forked tail, one of the most familiar and 
conspicuous of Indian birds, and rejoices in a number 
of native names. Thus in Bengal he is called Finga, in 
Southern India, Buchanga, and in the Deccan, most 
appropriately, Kotwal. For he certainly acts the part of 
a police-officer among the birds, being, in spite of his 
small size (for although he is a foot long, half of this is 
tail), a terror to kites and crows, and exercising a general 
supervision over the feathered community. All over 
India in the plains and up to 5,000 feet in the hills, the 
King-Crow exerts his sway, and he must bless the English 
Government for providing him with telegraph wires to 
sit on and, act as overseer in comfort. Nevertheless, he 
is more adaptable than other Drongos, which seem never 
to come to the ground, and if there is not a tree, wire, 
fence, post, cow, or sheep to sit on, he will sit about 
on terra-firma and look out for the grasshoppers, &c., / 
which form his food. It may be this readiness to make 
