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PALE-WINGED DRONGO. 



Dicrurus canipennis, SWAINS. 



Glossy blue-black ; tail forked ; quill-feathers with their 

 inner-shafts light-grey-brown, their internal surface greyish 

 white ; the third quill the longest. 



THE Drongo-Shrikes were formerly classed with the 

 flycatchers, because, like them they seize their food, 

 which consists entirely of insects, upon the wing, 

 much in the same manner as do the swallows. All 

 the species are restricted, in their geographic range, 

 to the warm latitudes of the old world, and what is 

 very singular they are all of a black colour. Hence 

 the older ornithologists, who were not accustomed 

 to pay much attention to variations of structure, 

 considered the greater number to be mere varieties 

 of one species. Le Vaillant, however, with his 

 usual discrimination, was the first writer who rec- 

 tified this error ; and he not only described all that 

 were then known to him, but collected them into 

 a separate genus by the name of Drongo. We may 

 retain this appellation in part, and yet adopt the 

 more classic one of Dicrurus given to the same 

 birds by M. Yieillot, a name which, although not 

 prior to that of Edolius^ is so peculiarly appro- 

 priate, from expressing the double or forked-tail 



