Dicrurus forficatus
Silhouette: Ferran Sayol · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5% in a week ~10%
The crested drongo (Dicrurus forficatus) is a passerine bird in the family Dicruridae. It is black with a bluish-green sheen, a distinctive crest on the forehead and a forked tail. Its habitat is lowland forests, both dry and humid, and open savannah country. It is a common bird and the IUCN has listed it as "least concern".
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the crested drongo in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Madagascar. He used the French name Le grand gobe-mouche noir hupé de Madagascar and the Latin Muscicapa Madagascariensis nigra major cristata. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the crested drongo. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ankarafantsika National Park | 🇲🇬 Madagascar | |
| 2 | Berenty Reserve | 🇲🇬 Madagascar | |
| 3 | Ranomafana National Park | 🇲🇬 Madagascar | |
| 4 | Mantadia National Park | 🇲🇬 Madagascar |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Antananarivo | 🇲🇬 Madagascar |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zürich Zoo | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | |
| 2 | Botanical and Zoological Garden of Tsimbazaza | 🇲🇬 Madagascar |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Crested Drongo sighting in Antananarivo on a given day, based on 13 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 57th most-seen of the 69 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, and over a week to about 10%, if each day is a fresh chance.
September
In that month about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Crested Drongo in Antananarivo on a given day, against under 5% in October to August, the lowest months. That is one of Antananarivo's driest months, with about 45 mm of rain against 480 mm in January.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Crested Drongo sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Antananarivo, in our data
Antananarivo is the only city on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Crested Drongo sightings: under 5% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the Crested Drongo that you can see in Antananarivo (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Madagascar Fody (about 90%), Malagasy Brush Warbler (about 50%) and Madagascar White-eye (about 50%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Crested Drongo is recorded against all the birds logged in Antananarivo (13 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
