Calamianes (Worcester); Palawan (Everett, Whitehead, Steere Exp., Bourns & Worcester, Celestino, White). Malacca, Java, Sumatra, Borneo.
Adult male.—Entire head, neck, chin, throat, and chest black; back, rump, tail-coverts, and crissum rich lemon-yellow; feathers of back with obscure dusky shaft-lines; basal feathers of crissum with mesial streaks of olive-green; lower breast, abdomen, sides, and flanks white with wide, black, mesial streaks; sides and flanks washed with yellow; breast also washed with yellow in some specimens; feathers of thighs black, tipped with light yellow; wings black; primaries edged with light gray; secondaries, tertials, and greater coverts narrowly edged with bright yellow; median coverts more widely edged with yellow; lesser coverts entirely yellow; inner webs of quills edged with pale yellow; under wing-coverts black, edged with yellow; axillars yellow; rectrices black, slightly fringed with yellow basally, widely tipped with yellow on inner webs, about 25 mm. on outermost pair and reduced to a mere trace on the middle pair; shafts of rectrices black above, brown below. A male measures: Wing, 111; tail, 75; culmen from base, 23; bill from nostril, 16; tarsus, 20.
Female.—Head, neck, sides of neck and ear-coverts black, streaked with olive-green; back yellow, but not so bright as in the male; jaw, chin, throat, and chest cinereous with whitish streaks; breast and abdomen like the male, but less heavily streaked with black; primaries more widely edged with pale gray than in the male; secondaries and tertials broadly edged with olive-green; primary-coverts and alula edged with gray; exposed edges of all the secondary-coverts olive-green; rectrices heavily washed with olive-green on outer webs; both webs of central pair nearly all olive-green; shafts yellow below. A female measures: Wing, 109; tail, 76; culmen from base, 23; bill from nostril, 16.5; tarsus, 21.
“Eight males average: Length, 197; wing, 114; tail, 77; culmen, 25; tarsus, 20.5; middle toe with claw, 22.3. Five females, length, 192; wing, 106; tail, 73; culmen, 23; tarsus, 20.5; middle toe with claw, 21.5. Iris deep red; legs and feet slaty blue, nails blackish; bill light reddish brown.” (Bourns and Worcester MS.)
Family DICRURIDÆ.
Bill strong, culmen ridged and strongly curved; cutting edge curved with a notch near the tip; nostrils hidden by many soft, antrorse, frontal plumes, the anterior of which have long bristle-like shafts; rictal bristles long and stiff; wing long; first primary more than one-half the second, the latter much less than third; fourth and fifth practically equal and longest; tail long to very long, slightly to deeply forked; rectrices ten, the two outer pairs curved outward near the tips. Legs and feet stout; tarsus slightly longer than bill from nostril; bill, legs, and nails black in all the species.
Genera.
- a1. Plumage mostly, or entirely, black; upper parts glossed with green or blue.
- a2. Plumage almost entirely gray and cinereous, with neither blue nor green gloss; tail deeply forked Bhuchanga (p. [708])
Genus DICRURUS Vieillot, 1816.
Wing much longer than tail; tail slightly forked; rectrices broad, the outermost with very little if any upward curve at tip. Plumage mostly, or entirely, black, glossed with blue or green.