Himalayan bird greater racket-tailed drongo seen for first time in Gurugram

A greater racket-tailed drongo (Dicrurus paradiseus) was spotted in Jhanjhrola on Sunday morning, likely the bird’s first recorded sighting in Gurugram district, birders said.

The greater racket-tailed drongo is typically associated with moist, dense forests along the Himalayan foothills and terai regions, and sightings in open habitats such as south Gurugram are highly unusual, birders said.

“We spotted the bird at 8.20 am in the open agricultural fields in Jhanjhrola, a semi-arid landscape. The bird was being chased by crows and black drongos, which made it difficult to track it for long but we were able to capture shots and identify the bird adequately,” said birder Arvind Yadav. “It is a Himalayan species and prefers dense canopy. It only descends marginally when it starts to snow in the higher ranges. The species is an altitudinal migrant and does not often come to the National Capital Region (NCR). It is seen in the Aravalli forest, but seeing it in an open semi-arid area of south Gurugram makes it a rare and surprising sighting,” he added. Yadav was accompanied by birders Gaurav Yadav, Anil Gandas and Akshat Dua.

In the recent past, there have only been six records of the species in NCR, with sightings at Surajpur in February 2023, Mangar Bani in May 2017, June 2021 and July 2022, and in Delhi at Usmanpur in the Yamuna Khadar in February 2006 and Sunder Nursery in June 2016.

Sudhir Vyas, veteran birder and author of the book Birds of the Delhi Area (2023), explained the rarity of the sighting on Sunday. “Greater racket-tailed drongos are essentially vagrants or casual visitors to Delhi’s immediate neighbourhood, but perhaps more regular and even sporadically breeding a little farther eastward at Haiderpur on the Ganga near Hastinapur, 100 km from Delhi proper,” he said. Citing his research, Vyas added, “These superb drongos are vagrants to the Delhi area. There have been at least six recent occurrences reported from the immediate environs of Delhi, all of the north Indian race grandis — at locations such as Usmanpur, Sunder Nursery, Mangar Bani, and Surajpur.”

He noted that while the species has been recorded in Faridabad’s Mangar forest, near Gurugram, this new sighting from Jhanjhrola could represent the first proper record from within Gurugram district boundaries.

Birder Kanwar B Singh said the species does not migrate and is also known to mimic the calls of other birds well.

“It is a common forest bird of India, including forests in the Himalayan foothills, northeast India and in the peninsula region,” said Singh, adding that there have only been scattered records of the species in NCR. “It prefers well-wooded areas. I remember a record from Sunder Nursery as well and the Aravalli forest belt is another potential habitat. Seeing at Jhanjhrola in a fairly open country there is a bit surprising. Perhaps, it was blown off by some recent strong dust storms,” Singh said.

The drongo’s appearance fits the bird’s known tendency to occasionally wander across considerable stretches of open countryside in search of habitat patches, though its breeding strongholds remain along the Himalayan foothills and eastern terai belt.

Birders said Sunday’s fleeting encounter as a significant milestone for Gurugram’s avian diversity and said it offered new hope for documenting rare and migratory species in previously overlooked semi-arid landscapes of South Gurugram.