io6 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



hesitation of the evil presence. He is the bully of the 

 wilderness of leaves, bouncing birds vastly his superior 

 in fighting weight and alertness of wing, and clattering 

 his jurisdiction to everything that flies. When the nest on 

 the nethermost branch of the Moreton Bay ash is packed 

 with hungry brood, his industry is exhilarating. Ordinarily 

 he gets all the food he wants by merely a superficial 

 inspection ; but with a family to provide for, he is compelled 

 to fly around, shrewdly examining every likely looking 

 locality. Clinging to the bark of the bloodwood, with 

 tail spread out fan-wise as additional support, he searches 

 every interstice, and ever and anon flies to the Moreton 

 Bay ash, and tears off the curling fragments of crisp bark 

 which afford concealment to the smaller beetles, grubs and 

 spiders. 



With the loose end of bark in his bill, tugging and 

 fluttering, using his tail as a lever with the tree as a 

 fulcrum, and objurgating in unseemly tones, as the bark 

 resists his efforts, the drongo assists the Moreton Bay ash 

 in discarding worn-out epidermis, and the tree recipro- 

 cates by offering safe nesting-place on its most brittle 

 branches. 



The drongo is a bird of many moods. Silent and inert 

 for months together, during the nesting season he is noisy 

 and alert, not only the first to give warning of the presence 

 of a falcon, but the boldest in chiveying from tree to tree 

 this universal enemy. 



He is then particularly partial to an aerial acrobatic 

 performance, unsurpassed for gracefulness and skill, and 

 significant of the joy of life and liberty and the delirious 

 passion of the moment. With a mighty effort, a chattering 

 scream and a preliminary downward cast, he impels him- 

 self with the ardour of flight — almost vertically — up above 

 the level of the tree-tops. Then, after a momentary, 

 thrilling pause, with a gush of twittering commotion and 

 stiffened wings preternaturally extended over the back and 

 flattened together into a single rigid fin, drops — a feathered 

 black bolt from the blue — almost to the ground, swoops up 



