32 GARDEN AND AVIAEY 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 KING-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, etc., 

 which form his food. It may be this readiness to make 



