Jungle owlet & Black Drongo

[Sucheth Lingachar]

This was Photographed at K.Gudi(From my Archive)
F/5.6 , 1/80s , ISO 400 , 300mm

We were Photographing this small jungle owlet in the main road at K Gudi, we observed one peculiar behavior of Black Drongo.

Jungle owlet was sitting on the branch and the Black Drongo was frequently coming and hitting the small owlet,this went on for few minutes and finally jungle owlet flew away.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice behavior photographed. Seems the light was quite low. I think this behavior is called 'Mobbing'. Thanks for sharing.

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice behaviour documented.This owlet is a diurnal bird and black drongo is known for mobbing at times, commonly seen against crows.Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Nice record sucheth. Mobbing is a very interesting behavior, I have often wondered why the birds of prey tolerate mobbing by much smaller birds and sometimes even by the birds on which the raptors prey. One version is that a raptor needs to conserve its energy and will not bother responding to mobbing as it is not worth it esp when the bird is at rest and not hunting.

TFS
Roopak

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The drongo's are pretty aggressive as well as intelligent birds. Jim Corbett has nicely described the behaviour of drongo's in reproducing alarm calls as well as calls of other birds of prey and frightening foraging birds to take away insects etc that they have found from the leaf litter.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi