Likewise, both male and female brood and feed the young during the approximately day nestling period. Recent fledglings have short tails and often remain together, often perched side by side. The male looks after the fledglings when the female starts building the next nest. One monitored pair reared five broods in a season, totalling 15 fledglings. During the breeding season fantails are territorial, chasing interlopers away with harsh chattering calls. While adults remain on or near their territories in the non-breeding season, juveniles occasionally gather in loose flocks where prey is readily available.
During fine, warm weather fantails forage from the understorey to the canopy, and even above the canopy. They can often be found associating with flocks of other forest species, such as brown creepers, whiteheads and silvereyes, perching below ready to intercept any prey that falls.
They have a strong association with foraging saddlebacks wherever the two species co-occur. When searching for prey in foliage, fantails often flick their wings and fan their tails, presumably to frighten hidden prey into movement so that they can be detected. During cold spells in winter they can be seen moving about on the ground in search of food. Given their small size and vulnerability to cold weather, it is not surprising that they occasionally roost communally, perched tightly together in a sheltered cavity, including inside sheds and garages.
Fantails mainly eat small invertebrates, such as moths, flies, beetles and spiders. Large prey is subdued by being held in a foot against a perch and then being repeatedly pecked. Indigestible portions, such as wings, are often discarded before the remainder is eaten. Small fruit are sometimes eaten. Atkinson, K. Frequency distribution and environmental correlates of plumage polymorphism in the grey fantail Rhipidura fuliginosa.
New Zealand Journal of Zoology 34 : Heather, B. The field guide to the birds of New Zealand. Viking, Auckland. Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic birds.
Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Miskelly, C. Establishment and local extinction of fantails Rhipidura fuliginosa on the Snares Islands, New Zealand. Notornis 55 : Robertson, C. Atlas of bird distribution in New Zealand, Ornithological Society of New Zealand, Wellington. Powlesland, R.
In Miskelly, C. New Zealand Birds Online. A small songbird with greyish head, white eyebrows, brown back and rump, cinnamon breast and belly, white and black bands across the upper breast, and a long black and white tail. Five percent of South Island birds are mainly black with black-brown over the rump, belly and flight feathers, and sometimes have a white spot over each ear.
South Island fantail adult call with goldfinches and sheep. South Island fantail, male song. Apart from the Snares Islands, fantails are not found on our subantarctic islands, nor on the Kermadecs. The average fantail territory is less than a hectare in area and surrounded by a substantial buffer zone. Birds may disappear from an area for a time and then return a few seasons later. In one 40 ha block I monitor, the number of breeding pairs in September varies between 5 and 12, and does not seem to be directly related to breeding success or failure in the previous season.
A reliable water supply in a territory is an asset. Fantails enjoy water, bathing and washing regularly and vigorously all year round. You can readily attract fantails to your garden with a bird bath. During dry weather, they are drawn irresistibly by the sound of water, whether garden sprinkler, dripping tap or babbling stream. In late autumn and early winter, groups of fantails can be seen moving beyond their usual territories.
Those black individuals that straggle across Cook Strait are bullied, chased and generally harassed by the resident pied birds. New Zealand is unusual for the number of endemic birds that have a black form. Other examples are the black robin and Snares Islands tomtit. Black fantails occur only in New Zealand. You can hear their small beaks snap shut when they have made their catch. They also search for insects that hide in cracks or crevices in the bark on branches and tree trunks.
Fantails are active from dawn to dusk. When other small bush birds have retired for the night, fantails are still busy hunting a last snack for supper. In winter and early spring, when food is at its scarcest, they can be seen on the ground turning over leaves as their hunt becomes more desperate. Should they take large blowflies and moths, they hammer them, kingfisher style, to soften them.
Capturing insects on the wing calls for impressive flying skills—hawking, hovering, gliding, swooping, diving. Yet the birds are not always quick enough. Sometimes they may be found in groups, especially family groups. They may be only five weeks old. On the other hand, chicks from a late-season brood are often still with their parents five months later.
Having been welcome for so long, these older juveniles fiercely resist their eventual expulsion. The birds chase, threaten and click their beaks at each other, and in rare cases end up wrestling on the ground. Grasping each other with their feet, they roll around, locked together like an untidy feather ball propelled by random wing-beats. The onset of breeding varies considerably with both the year and the location. Weather also plays a part. Rain followed by mild conditions induces early nest building, with egg laying as early as August.
Continual cold wet weather delays both nest building and egg laying until mid-September. If the weather stays wet and windy, exposed nests, especially those that have not been laid in, may be abandoned. Before they start to build, both birds of a pair sit for some time at their chosen nest site in an incubating pose, sometimes side by side. Often copulation takes place on the nest site before work starts.
Nests are constructed from a range of fine Materials-dried grasses, rootlets, moss, bark fibre, small pieces of dry, rotten wood—bound together with cobwebs. Nest linings include animal hair, tree-fern hair and seed down. Fantails sometimes thieve material from the nearby nests of other species. Once I saw a pair demolish one of their own old nests and reuse the materials. Nests are typically 3 to 5 m above the ground, usually sited at a branch fork and always protected by overhead foliage.
The work of nest building is interspersed by extended periods of feeding and courtship. The cock sings from a perch, the hen often above him. He expands his wings horizontally and rapidly vibrates them. Often he feeds the hen before mating with her.
In early spring, the time taken to build a nest is 15 to 20 days. In summer it is much shorter, usually just three or four days.
If this trauma takes place at night, the nest is usually abandoned and a new one built. The fastest rebuild I have observed was 36 hours from site selection to nest completion. In this instance, only 57 hours elapsed between predation a rat ate two eggs and the first egg of the next clutch being laid in a new nest. When nest building follows the successful fledging of a family, the hen takes seven or eight days to complete the task by herself, while her partner cares for the brood that has just fledged.
A clutch usually consists of three to five eggs, which are white with brown markings. Larger clutches are laid mid-season November and smaller clutches at the beginning and end of the season. Incubation takes 13 or 14 days. They also live in swamps and mangroves, deserts, urban areas, and farms. Some species are pickier with their habitat, and only live in areas untouched by humans. Other species are more flexible with their ecosystems.
The various species of fantails are spread across Australia, Southeast Asia, parts of India, and a variety of western Pacific islands. Their specific distribution depends on the species. Some species are widespread, while others live on a single isolated island. Across the board, these birds are insectivorous, or insect eaters.
They capture most of their prey on the wing, and the birds are incredibly skilled at flying and snatching insects out of the air. Some species stand on a perch and wait for prey to come close enough to swoop down on it. Other species flush out insects by hopping through the bushes in search of their quarry. They feed on everything from flies, mosquitoes, moths, and beetles, to spiders , centipedes, and other terrestrial insects.
Human impact varies drastically from species to species. Generally speaking, those species with wider distributions usually have healthier populations.
While species restricted to one or two small islands typically have smaller populations that humans impact more drastically. Habitat destruction is their primary danger, and some species have stricter habitat needs than others. No, fantails do not make good pets. In many places, and with many species, it is illegal to own one as a pet.
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