Crested drongo

Taxonomy

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the crested drongo in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Madagascar. He used the French name Le grand gobe-mouche noir hupé de Madagascar and the Latin Muscicapa Madagascariensis nigra major cristata. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the crested drongo. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Lanius forficatus and cited Brisson's work. The specific name forficatus is Neo-Latin for "scissor-shaped". This species is now placed in the genus Dicrurus that was introduced by French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816.

Two subspecies are recognised:

• D. f. forficatus (Linnaeus, 1766) – Madagascar and nearby islands
• D. f. potior (Bangs & T E Penard, 1922) – island of Anjouan, Comoros

The common name of drongo, now applied to all members of the family Dicruridae, was originally a Malagasy word from the Betsimisaraka dialect; more commonly it is called railovy in Malagasy.