These birds are great. As juveniles they look fairly ordinary – black with a body length of about 32cm, and red eyes. But as they get to adulthood, they grow a prominent crest from the base of the beak, and two of their tail feathers grow and grow, until the tail is longer than the bird. These two feathers each consist of a naked shaft with a “racket” on the end – they really do look like badminton rackets.
In flight, they are aerobatic, twisting and turning to follow and swallow insects on the wing, their rackets twisting and fluttering behind. They’re also loud, with a big repertoire of noises – clicks, whistles, a scolding noise. They are also prodigious mimics, so you can often be fooled into thinking you have a blue-winged pitta or a green magpie in the garden, only to find it’s a drongo taking the piss.
But if you hear aloud fluting “diddle-oo-peep-peep” in your garden, it’s a greater racket-tailed drongo.
All the sounds are from the drongo apart from the “chackachackachacka“, a bit like a broken-down traction engine, which you’ll hear clearly at the beginning.
That’s a squirrel that seemed to take umbrage at the intrusion.