Ashy Drongo

It was a delightful morning today, we had a new winter visitor. An Ashy Drongo; (Dicrurus leucophaeus) a bird that migrates from the Himalayas to the subcontinent for winter, a distance of more than 2000 kilometers.
The bird looks very similar to a resident bird, the Black Drongo . On field, the Ashy can be easily distinguished from the Black by a white spot carried by the black drongo, located between the eye and the beak. Moreover, the Ashy drongo has crimson eyes, which can be quite striking.
A large number of drongos congregate in places where fire is set, to dried up grass. They catch insects, that try to escape from these fires. 

Black Drongo

Just like in the previous post, this Black Drongo too visited my ship when we were about 250 kilometers off the Gujarat coast.
This one had a broken beak, probably the result of a fight. The bird ensured that it always sat on a spot with a vantage point .The easiest way yo recognize this Drongo is by the white patch below its eye, none of the similar looking Drongo species have it.The bird was hunting and feeding on the scores of grasshoppers that had somehow landed on my ship.
Camera : Sony H-7 , f/4.8 , 1/200

coffee

Greater Racket-tailed Drongo

This bird has a long and shallowly forked tail, with the shafts of the two outermost feathers greatly extended and ending in the rackets which give this species its name.You can notice the long tail of the bird, in addition to the tail, the bird is also got a dark crest. Like all other Drongo's this bird too is aggressive by nature, and when I spotted it for this photograph, it had just chased away a Jungle babbler.
As you can see, the background is quite overexposed; this because I had to slowdown the shutter speed to get the details of this dark bird from an overly bright sky.
f/4.5 , 1/40 sec ISO-80

Bronzed Drongo

The Drongo is like the policeman of the forest, he keeps watch over the countryside and will not hesitate to attack birds much larger than him. Timid birds build their nests near a Drongo's for he not only guards his nest but also of the others in the neighborhood. He is also the earliest bird to rise and his sweet voice can be heard as the faintest light breaks in the eastern skies.