With the loose end of bark in his bill, tugging and fluttering, using his tail as a lever with the tree as a fulcrum, and objurgating in unseemly tones, as the bark resists his efforts, the drongo assists the Moreton Bay ash in discarding worn-out epidermis, and the tree reciprocates by offering safe nesting-place on its most brittle branches.

The drongo is a bird of many moods.  Silent and inert for months together, during the nesting season he is noisy and alert, not only the first to give warning of the presence of a falcon, but the boldest in chiveying from tree to tree this universal enemy.

He is then particularly partial to an aerial acrobatic performance, unsurpassed for gracefulness and skill, and significant of the joy of life and liberty and the delirious passion of the moment.  With a mighty effort, a chattering scream and a preliminary downward cast, he impels himself with the ardour of flight—­almost vertically—­up above the level of the tree-tops.  Then, after a momentary, thrilling pause, with a gush of twittering commotion and stiffened wings preternaturally extended over the back and flattened together into a single rigid fin, drops—­a feathered black bolt from the blue—­almost to the ground, swoops up to a resting-place, and with bowing head and jerking tail gloats over his splendid feat.

Though denied fluency of utterance, the spangled drongo has no rival in the peculiar character of the notes and calls over which he has secure copyright.  The shrill stuttering shriek which accompanies his aerial acrobatic performances, the subdued tinkling tones of pleasure, the jangle as of cracked china, the high-pitched tirade of jarring abuse and scolding at the presence of an enemy, the meek cheeps, the tremulous, coaxing whistles when the young first venture from the nest—­each and every sound, unique and totally unlike that of any other bird, indicates the oddity of this sportful member of the crow family.

EYES AFLAME

Perhaps the most interesting and entertaining of all the birds of the island is that commonly known as the weaver or friendly bird, otherwise the metallic starling, the shining calornis of the ornithologist, the “Tee-algon” of the blacks.  Throughout the coastal tract of North Queensland this bird is fairly familiar.  In these days it could not escape notice and comment, for it is an avowed socialist establishing colonies every few miles.  There are four on Dunk Island, and though not permanent residents, spending but little more than half the year with us, they are among the few birds who have permanent homes.  In some lofty tree they build perhaps two hundred nests in groups of from two to six.  With all these nests weighting its thinner branches the tree may look wearied and afflicted, but it obtains direct benefit from the presence of the birds.  The nests, deftly built of tendrils and slender creepers and grass