Mimicry in Birds S75 
was actually described in a scientific publication as one of the friar-birds. It is 
accordingly presumed that hawks make the same mistake about the living birds, and 
let off the orioles when they meet them, for fear of getting a whole brotherhood of 
friars about their unlucky heads. 
Another case, even more striking than this, because the birds concerned in it are 
not so nearly akin—both friar-birds and orioles being Passerines—is that of the Drongo 
and its mimic, the Fork-tailed Cuckoo. The drongo (Dicrwrus ater) is familiar to all 
residents in the Hast as the King Crow; he is a black bird about the size of a 
starling, with short legs and a conspicuously forked tail, who spends most of his 
time sitting on telegraph-wires or dead boughs and dashing out at passing insects. 
Such time as he has to spare he bestows on hustling out of his vicinity various 
predatory birds, especially crows and kites, for, beimg remarkably nimble in the air 
and very sharp of bill and claw, he can make himself respected by species of very 
much larger ‘size. 
Now in the Indian region, where the drongo is one of the very aouamament birds, 
there also occurs a small lack cuckoo with a forked tail (Swrniculus lugubris), which 
at first sight is so like the king crow that it may easily be taken for it, the 
pair-toed feet of a cuckoo not being a point which is likely to be noticed unless the 
bird is actually in hand or very near. As drongos have been seen feeding the young 
of this cuckoo, it presumably lays its eggs in their nests, which would be an 
excessively risky proceeding for a bird which they could easily recognise as not one 
of themselves. As it is, the cuckoo gets found out at times, for some drongos have 
actually been seen to peck one of these birds to death. 
Im spite of this, however, it is probably of general benefit to this extra- fondle 
euckoo to wear the very of the “ Kotwal’- Guaceamiendient of police), as the drongo 
is called in the Deccan; for at any rate the criminal classes are likely to treat him 
with more respect in the police uniform than if they could see he was only a poor 
vagabond cuckoo with the usual weak bill and feet of his family. 
The parasitic cuckoos have, indeed, a general tendency to look like something 
else—generally a hawk, as is well known to be the case with our own familiar species. 
But an equally familiar Indian cuckoo carries the hawk-like appearance much further. 
This is the bird well known, 
and thoroughly dishked, as the 
Brain-Fever Bird (Hierococcy.x 
varius); 1ts note resembling the 
word “brain-fever” repeated 
time after time in a continually 
higher key. This scale it will 
go over again and again, even 
at night, and as it calls in the 
hot weather, when it is hard 
enough to get to sleep in any 
case, its blood is _ sought, 
although usually im vain, by 
the Anglo-Indian. The natives, 
however, like the noise, as they 
do that produced by beating 
on a kerosene tin in default DRONGO-CUCKOO. 
of a tom-tom ! 
Now the brain-fever bird is 
the most wonderful feather-copy 
