<img src="http://www.lamma.com.hk/forum/images/flora-fauna/drongo3.jpg" align=left hspace=10>Summer is a poor time for birds - many species visit in the winter and disappear in the spring. Others are just passing though briefly either in autumn or spring.

One exception is the Black Drongo - this is arrives around April and stays for the summer. You can see them perched prominently on high branches or swooping for insects. They are slim, all black and have a long forked tail. They seem to be especially noticeable after the heavy rains, when the air is full of flying ants.

Indian Cuckoos mainly lay their eggs in the nests of black drongos, but both species seem to be doing quite well to judge by the numbers

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Does the drongo have a distinctive call at all?

Sounds like a bird that must have been named in Australia - 'Ya great drongo!'

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And a rinky dinky doo to you too!

The black drongo has a weird array of buzzy cheeps - very hard to describe. The term drongo is used in Australia to describe a fool or simpleton, but is apparently not because of the character of the bird itself, but of a racehorse named after it.

According to the Australian National Dictionary Centre at ANU, Drongo was raced in a number of events in the 1920's and although coming close on several occasions, never actually won a race in its whole career of 37 starts. Hence after the horse's retirement, the racing world started applying the term "drongo' to no-hopers.

The drongo which occurs in Australia is actually the hair-crested drongo. This is very similar to the black drongo, but has a thicker bill and flatter tail and different calls. It also visits Lamma in the winter, and small parties can often be seen in the red flowering tree near the rave party house at the top of Heart Attack Hill coming up to Tai Peng from Pak Kok.

Returning briefly to Hong Kong I notice that there are quite a few young black drongos around on Lamma at the moment. These are already fully grown apart from the tail, which is not yet long and forked but short and rather ragged. Some of them seem to be quite unskilled in their attempts to catch insects too.

So it seems as though the black drongos have had a successful season in spite of all the Indian Cuckoos, which are supposed to parasatise their nests. i haven't seen any young cuckoos around, but the adults seem to have disappeared.

August is generally uninteresting for birds apart from the emergence of young, but there are still the common resident species around - three species of bulbul, crested mynah, black kite, magpie robin, black-necked starling, tree sparrow etc.

In September a very subtle change took place in the drongo population - the black drongos were replaced by a very similar species, the hair-crested drongo. Maybe the latter's arrival is the signal for the black drongos to move on. Now there are only hair-crested drongos left.

How do you tell the difference? With great difficulty. The hair-crested drongo's hair crest is not usually visible. The tail is stiffer and less forked, the feathers are glossier, the bill is thicker and the flight and voice are a bit different. It is also more aggressive, chasing other bords from their perches. Small parties of hair-crested drongos can now be seen all over Lamma.

It's 11 months since the post above - now the process is starting again.

The black drongos are currently very conspicuous and noisy. Small parties are gathering together and communicating with their strange squeaky calls, rather like a balloon being rubbed by children at a birthday party.

This probably means they are gathering together preparing to leave for the winter

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I was given one of this when I was was little by a class mate, 11 yrs old, during summer holiday, the exchange was with a baby crested myna I caught...but this drongo was with a broken wing so it never was able to fly, it love raw beef, kept it for about a year until it suddenly die...sad.
I had noticed a drastic drop in its population in the area, 20 years ago, there were load of them, but now I only see them every now an then and never more than a few, used to come in flocks. I been living in this region more than 10 years since I been back in 1994, and I was aware of this type of bird since I was 9 yrs old when I was living in the same region, before going study oversea in 1986 when I was 14. I used to notice the Alexander Parrots migration in flocks too, not so many of them these days except a smal population in TST at the Kowloon Park where some of them nest on a yearly basis.