Can you identify the bird species in these photographs?
Drongo (Black), right ?
Take a closer look. You are only partly right. To be precise, the bird on the left is right (pun intended) !!!
Last evening I was out with my camera and close to the Lost Pond, I came across a bird that looked like a Drongo. But something was not quite right. So take a closer look at the photograph on the right. Look at the beak carefully. What do you see? Now look at the bird photograph on the left. Compare the beaks. Can you make out any difference? Yes, the bird in the right has a finer, curved beak.
I followed the bird for over 30 minutes and managed to get some pictures and here are some of them.
My patience was amply rewarded and I got some some nice shots of the bird – It is known by the name: FORK-TAILED DRONGO-CUCKOO. You can see the details on its plumage from the above photographs: overall bluish cast to the plumage, the white spots (juvenile), the white thigh-patch, the extensive white barring on the vent and undertail coverts and the absence of the rictal spot (at the base of the beak, a pointer in the case of the Black Drongo).
I have not seen this bird in Rishi Valley earlier, though I am familiar with it from Chennai and other locations (in Western Ghats). It is often overlooked and mistaken for the more familar Black Drongo. Incidentally, the bird I asked you to compare it with (a Black Drongo) turned up on the very same trees that the Drongo-Cuckoo had used later in the evening and posed for a few shots.
I also noticed in the field and from the photographs (my own and those from the internet) that the Drongo-cuckoo tends to hold the wings somewhat loose and drooping by the side of its body and unlike the Black Drongo.
The Fork-tailed Drongo-cuckoo is closely related to the Square-tailed Drongo-cuckoo (some taxonomists feel both these are the same species). It is widely distributed in the country and in South Asia. It is a brood-parasite and lays its eggs in the nests of other birds like babblers, bulbuls and shrikes. They disperse after breeding and the bird I saw was perhaps a bird on the move.
There was a Sirkeer Malkoha too at the Lost Pond!
Dr Santharam