Cormorants’ eggs are of a very pale green colour, and their nests smell of bad fish, for the owners care nothing about sanitation. Young cormorants are not nearly so black as their parents, and do not attain adult plumage till they are four years old.
Our friend the king crow (_Dicrurus ater_) is so abundant throughout India, and possesses to so great a degree the faculty of arresting the attention, that we are apt to overlook his less numerous relatives. In Ceylon it is otherwise. _Dicrurus ater_ occurs in that fair isle, but only in certain parts thereof, and is not so abundant as his cousin, the white-vented drongo (_Dicrurus leucopygialis_). The former has, therefore, to play second fiddle in Ceylon, where he is usually known to Europeans as the black fly-catcher. The white-vented drongo is their king crow—the bird that lords over the _corvi_.
The drongos constitute a well-defined family. When you know one member you can scarcely fail to recognise the others. They fall into two great classes, the fancy and the plain, the dandies and those that dress quietly. The bhimraj, or larger racket-tailed drongo (_Dissemurus paradiseus_), is the most perfect example of the fancy or ornamental class. His head is set off by a crest, but his speciality is the pair of outer tail feathers, which attain a length of nearly two feet.
Of the less ornamental drongos, the king crow is the best-known example. This bird is found in all parts of India, and occurs in Ceylon. Almost as widely distributed, but far less abundant, is the white-bellied drongo. This species may be met with in all parts of India save the Punjab. In the Western Province of Ceylon it is replaced by a drongo having less white in the plumage.
It is a moot question whether this last is to be looked upon as a race or a distinct species. Legge writes: “No bird in Ceylon is so puzzling as the present, and there is none to which I have given so much attention with a view to arriving at a satisfactory determination as to whether there are two species in the island or only one. I cannot come to any other conclusion than that there is but one, the opposing types of which are certainly somewhat distinct from one another, but which grade into each other in such a manner as to forbid their being rightly considered as distinct species; and I will leave it to others, who like to take the matter up for investigation, to prove whether my conclusions are erroneous or not.” Oates has since constituted the birds which have less white on the lower parts a distinct species, which he calls the white-vented drongo (_Dicrurus leucopygialis_). He admits that the amount of white on this form and on the white-bellied species (_Dicrurus cærulescens_) is variable, and that a bird is occasionally met with which might, as regards this character, be assigned indifferently to one or the other species, but, says he, the colour of the throat and breast will, in these cases, be a safe guide in identification. The parts in question are grey in the white-bellied species and dark brown in the white-vented form. It seems to me that a slight difference in the colouring of the feathers of the throat is not a very safe foundation on which to establish a new species. However, this piece of species-splitting need not worry the Anglo-Indian, for the white-vented form is found only in Ceylon. All drongos with white underparts that occur in India are _Dicrurus cærulescens_. This bird is not common in Madras; I observed it but twice during eighteen months’ residence in that city. It is in shape exactly like the common king crow, and possesses the characteristic forked tail, but it is a smaller bird, being nine and a half inches in length, and therefore shorter by fully three inches than the black drongo. Its upper plumage is deep indigo; the throat and breast are grey; all the remainder of the lower plumage is white. Its habits are very much like those of the king crow, but it is less addicted to the open country, seeming to prefer well-wooded localities. I have never seen the _Dhouli_, or white-bellied drongo, perched on anything but a branch of a tree. It almost always catches its insect prey upon the wing, after the manner of a fly-catcher. Jerdon, however, states that he once saw it descend to the ground for an insect.