32 THE BIRDS OF CALCUTTA. 



but like Mr. Micawber, wait for something to turn up 

 and then come down on it, as is the custom of these 

 Oriental and American oligarchs in feathers. The true 

 shrikes, one would think, might fill such a place, but 

 they prefer devouring their smaller relatives to waging 

 war on birds of prey, though they hate them well enough. 

 I have only noticed one near relative of the King- Crow 

 about Calcutta, and that in the Botanical Gardens, in the 

 person of the Kesraj or Hair-crested Drongo (Chibia hotien- 

 totla), a larger species than the King-Crow, with a shorter 

 tail and longer bill, and exquisitely glossy plumage, deriv- 

 ing its English name from the curious ornament of a few 

 long hairs springing from the forehead. This bird is 

 sociable, unlike the common Drongo, and does not go in 

 much for fly-catching, preferring to rummage in flowers 

 for honey and insects, for which purpose its long, curved, 

 fine-pointed bill is well adapted it is, in fact, a drongo 

 trying to turn honeysucker. Another cousin of the King- 

 Crow's, however, although only known here as a captive, 

 cannot be passed over. This is the Bhimraj, or Racket - 

 tailed Drongo (Dissemurus paradiseus), a bird nearly as 

 big as a magpie, with the outer tail-feathers prolonged for 

 about a foot into long bare shafts, with, a bit of feathering 

 at the tip an ornament which does not usually stand 

 much chance of maintaining its perfection in the miser- 

 ably small cages in which the poor birds are usually confin- 

 ed. No wonder they do not live long ; very few, I am 

 told, survive a year. But given a big cage, say three or four 

 feet square, the bhimraj is not difficult to keep ; he will eat 

 almost anything, like one of the crow tribe, though the 



