📷 The Drongo's Watch — Coastal India · 02 Jul 2026
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The Drongo's Watch
Coastal India · nature
A black drongo perches on the cut top of a bamboo fence post, the sea behind it, low pink flowers below. A small bird taking the high ground.
Drongos are among the most photogenic small birds in India. They are entirely black, with long forked tails and a slightly hooked beak, and they perch on whatever is highest — a fence post, the tip of a dead branch, the very topmost stem of a sugarcane stalk. They eat insects mid-flight and are notorious for harassing larger birds that come too close.
This one had claimed a bamboo fence on a low cliff above the sea. The fence was a rough thing — stakes of bamboo cut at different heights, set into the dune behind a beach, holding back a patch of ground-creeping bougainvillea. The drongo was watching the air for insects, then dropping back to the post each time. I waited for the moment it was still and the head was angled out to sea. The whole composition is built around verticals — the fence stakes, the bird's tail — and the long horizontal of the ocean. The bird never noticed me. They almost never do.