The Hunters
By the well we put some honey
on
a heart-shaped leaf
and
waited to see what it could catch
Black
ants came in armies
The
sun swooped
holding
on to a drongo’s forked tail
The
leaf hosted battles at its peripheries
At
dusk, oval heads lay prostrate in the
sweetness
The
sun sank trying to see
beyond
the spindly shadows of their feet
The
rain came in through gaps in the tiled roof
The
lizards crawled further down the chimney
eavesdropping
as we discussed
the
warriors under our sheet
The
wet morning smelt green
The
ground had been washed clean
and
the honey-trap seized by a rogue wind
The
ants were still there
huddled
around a leaf-shaped memory
So
were we
Drongo -- Krista Anandakuttan
The drongos are a subfamily of small passerine birds. Originally the Dicruridae family included the single genus Dicrurus but has been expanded to include the subfamilies Rhipidurinae (Australasian fantails), Monarchinae (monarchs and paradise flycatchers) and Grallininae (magpie-larks), and the placement of the pygmy drongo (Chaetorhynchus papuensis) is being considerd. The name was originally from an indigenous language of Madagascar, but the family Dicruridae probably originated in the Indo Malayan area before moving into Africa about 15 million years ago and across the Wallace Line into Australasia about 6 million years ago. (The Wallace Line is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by Alfred Russel Wallace and separates the ecozones of Asia and Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia. It runs between Borneo and Sulawesi (Celebes) and through the Lombok Strait between Bali and Lombok; the term was first used by Thomas Huxley in an 1868 paper to the Zoological Society of London.) Despite their small size, drongos are aggressive and fearless and will attack much larger species if their nest or young are threatened. Several species of animals and birds respond to drongos' alarm calls, which often warn of the presence of a predator. Fork-tailed drongos are known to use alarm calls when no predator is in the area to cause animals to flee and abandon food; they get up to 23% of their food this way. They not only use their own alarm calls but imitate those of at least 51 other species, animals as well as birds, and if the call of one species is not effective the drongo will try another.Some drongos, especially the greater racket-tailed drongo, are noted for their ability to mimic other birds and even mammals. In Australia and New Zealand, a "drongo" is a "stupid fellow" due to a racehorse bythat name in the 1920s that never won despite many starts.
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