What the hills call it
Bhujanga
/ bhu·jan·gaa /भुजंगा
Black Drongo — Glossy black and fearless, hawking insects from a wire.
Field notes
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Dicruridae · Drongos
- Genus
- Dicrurus
- Length
- 28 cm
- Weight
- 40–60 g
- At Kunja
- Resident — here all year round
- Conservation
- Least Concern
How to know it
A glossy jet-black bird with a long, deeply forked tail. Bold, fearless and pugnacious — it will mob a hawk or crow many times its size.
What it eats
Insects, mostly — grasshoppers, beetles, bees and dragonflies — hawked from a perch; it follows cattle and the plough for what they stir up.
Where & when to spot it
On wires, fence-posts and bare branches over open ground, dropping to snatch insects and returning to the same perch.
Nesting & mating
A flimsy cup wedged in a high fork, fiercely defended; three to four eggs through the warm months.
In the lens
Black Drongo, photographed at Haldwani
Photographs by Manohar Negi · mnegi.com — tap any photo to view it full
More to spot
PasseridaeHouse Sparrow
Passer domesticus
Kunja
MuscicapidaeBlue Whistling Thrush
Myophonus caeruleus
Kunja
SturnidaeCommon Myna
Acridotheres tristis
Kunja
HirundinidaeRed-rumped Swallow
Cecropis daurica
Kunja
PycnonotidaeHimalayan Bulbul
Pycnonotus leucogenys
Kunja
MegalaimidaeGreat Barbet
Psilopogon virens
Kunja