Common Square-tailed Drongo
Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2014 12:02 am
542. Common Square-tailed Drongo Dicrurus ludwigii (Kleinbyvanger)
Order: Passeriformes. Family: Dicruridae
Taxonomic Note:
Name change from Square-tailed Drongo to Common Square-tailed Drongo follows split of Western Square-tailed Drongo (D. occidentalis).
Description
19 cm. An all black glossy bird with a shallow forked tail. It has ruby-red eyes. The legs and feet are black.
Female is duller black than male.
Juvenile resembles female but has pale tips to the feathers.
Similar species: Smaller than the Fork-tailed Drongo, lacks the pale wing patches and the tail is only slightly notched. It differs from Southern Black Flycatcher by its smaller, rounder head, and red (not dark brown) eye that can be seen at close range. It also flicks its wings, especially when agitated. It may be distinguished from larger male Black Cuckooshrike by its slightly notched tail and the lack of both a yellow shoulder and an orange-yellow gape.
Distribution
In southern Africa, it is locally common in Mozambique bordering on Zimbabwe, eSwatini, Limpopo Province and coastal areas of KwaZulu-Natal, marginally extending into the Eastern Cape.
Habitat
Evergreen forests. It generally prefers closed canopy evergreen woodland with sporadic clearings, also occurring in gallery forest along watercourses and alien Eucalyptus plantations with indigenous undergrowth.
Diet
Insects. It eats a wide variety of mostly large insects, often hunting from a perch on the border of a clearing, hawking its prey aerially. It also forages in mixed-species flocks, sometimes stealing the food caught by other birds (a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism).
Breeding
Monogamous and territorial. Both sexes help build the nest. The nest is a well-built cup made of leaf petioles, twigs, tendrils, fibres and lichen, bound together with strands of spider web. It is usually suspended between the two branches of a fork in a tree, often near the edge of thick forest. Egg-laying season is from September-January, peaking from October-November. Two to three eggs are laid.
Call
A strident cheweet-weet-weet or a loud cheritl cheritl and other phrases.
Listen to Bird Call: http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Surniculus-lugubris
Status
Locally common resident in favoured habitat.
Order: Passeriformes. Family: Dicruridae
Taxonomic Note:
Name change from Square-tailed Drongo to Common Square-tailed Drongo follows split of Western Square-tailed Drongo (D. occidentalis).
Description
19 cm. An all black glossy bird with a shallow forked tail. It has ruby-red eyes. The legs and feet are black.
Female is duller black than male.
Juvenile resembles female but has pale tips to the feathers.
Similar species: Smaller than the Fork-tailed Drongo, lacks the pale wing patches and the tail is only slightly notched. It differs from Southern Black Flycatcher by its smaller, rounder head, and red (not dark brown) eye that can be seen at close range. It also flicks its wings, especially when agitated. It may be distinguished from larger male Black Cuckooshrike by its slightly notched tail and the lack of both a yellow shoulder and an orange-yellow gape.
Distribution
In southern Africa, it is locally common in Mozambique bordering on Zimbabwe, eSwatini, Limpopo Province and coastal areas of KwaZulu-Natal, marginally extending into the Eastern Cape.
Habitat
Evergreen forests. It generally prefers closed canopy evergreen woodland with sporadic clearings, also occurring in gallery forest along watercourses and alien Eucalyptus plantations with indigenous undergrowth.
Diet
Insects. It eats a wide variety of mostly large insects, often hunting from a perch on the border of a clearing, hawking its prey aerially. It also forages in mixed-species flocks, sometimes stealing the food caught by other birds (a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism).
Breeding
Monogamous and territorial. Both sexes help build the nest. The nest is a well-built cup made of leaf petioles, twigs, tendrils, fibres and lichen, bound together with strands of spider web. It is usually suspended between the two branches of a fork in a tree, often near the edge of thick forest. Egg-laying season is from September-January, peaking from October-November. Two to three eggs are laid.
Call
A strident cheweet-weet-weet or a loud cheritl cheritl and other phrases.
Listen to Bird Call: http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Surniculus-lugubris
Status
Locally common resident in favoured habitat.