The Black Drongo 



269 



distributed round the larger end of the egg, and with under- 

 lying grey spots as distinctly indicated as the darker ones. 

 The eggs of the Cuckoo have not been described, but they 

 will doubtless be found to resemble those of the Drongo, for 

 a pair of the latter have been seen by Davison to feed 

 a young Surniculus. Thus the eggs of the two birds are 

 probably very similar, and here is where the " mimicry " in 

 the plumage would come in. If the Cuckoo were red or 

 white or of bright colours, the 

 Drongos would never allow it 

 to come within hail of their 

 nest. Of the Black Drongo Mr. 

 A. O. Hume writes — " These 

 birds are very jealous of the 

 approach of other birds, even 

 of their own species, to a nest 

 in which they have eggs, and 

 many a little family of theirs 

 would have been safely reared 

 this year (1873), and their ovate 

 cradles have escaped the plun- 

 dering hands of any Shikarees, 

 had not the attention of the 

 latter been invariably called to 

 the whereabouts of the nest by 

 the pertinacious and vicious rushes of one or the other of 

 the parents at every feathered thing that passed near their 

 nest." It would only be, therefore, to a Drongo-like bird 

 that a chance of approaching the nest at all would be 

 possible, and even this must be difficult, as Mr. Hume 

 expressly states that the owners of a nest are jealous of the 

 intrusion even of one of their own kind into their dominion. 

 The Black Cuckoo, from the absolute similarity of its 

 plumage to that of the Drongo, might at least be mistaken 

 by the husband for his wife, or vice versa, if it succeeded in 



The Black Drongo (Ruchanga atra). 



