With the loose end of bark in his bill, tugging and fluttering, using his
tail as a lever with the tree as a fulcrum, and objurgating in unseemly
tones, as the bark resists his efforts, the drongo assists the Moreton
Bay ash in discarding worn-out epidermis, and the tree reciprocates by
offering safe nesting-place on its most brittle branches.
The drongo is a bird of many moods. Silent and inert for months together,
during the nesting season he is noisy and alert, not only the first to
give warning of the presence of a falcon, but the boldest in chiveying
from tree to tree this universal enemy.
He is then particularly partial to an aerial acrobatic performance,
unsurpassed for gracefulness and skill, and significant of the joy of
life and liberty and the delirious passion of the moment. With a mighty
effort, a chattering scream and a preliminary downward cast, he impels
himself with the ardour of flight--almost vertically--up above the level
of the tree-tops. Then, after a momentary, thrilling pause, with a gush of
twittering commotion and stiffened wings preternaturally extended over
the back and flattened together into a single rigid fin, drops--a
feathered black bolt from the blue--almost to the ground, swoops up to a
resting-place, and with bowing head and jerking tail gloats over his
splendid feat.
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