North Island Fantail – Pīwakawaka

Rhipidura fuliginosa placabilis

Fantail are the most common bird you will see in the forest

As you walk through the bush around the Tangihua lodge you will disturb insects attracting fantails. Their numbers are falling due to predation from Rats, possums and mustelids. You used to be able to see two or three at a time but now that is all you will see all day.

Description

Length: 16 cm – Weight: 8 g

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.

About Fantails

Chatterboxes

Fantails are often heard giving ‘cheep’ calls in a number of situations, such as when foraging or alarmed. The species’ distinctive song has been described as “a chattering tweeta-tweeta-tweeta …. of regular rhythm”, and of high pitch. It can be heard throughout the year, particularly during the breeding season (August-March).

Nesting

Commonly found the nest is constructed of fine materials (mosses, dried rotten wood fibres, hair, dried grasses, fern scales) tightly woven with cobwebs. Most nests are sheltered from above by foliage, and often include a ‘tail’ of material below the base of the nest.
Two to five eggs are laid, with both adults taking turns on the nest through the approximately 14-day incubation period. Both male and female brood and feed the young during the approximately 14-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.

Behaviour and ecology

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 can gather in loose flocks
Fantails forage from the understorey to the canopy, and even above the canopy. 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 occasionally roost communally, perched tightly together in a sheltered cavity, including inside sheds and garages.

Food

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.

Fantails use three methods to catch insects.

• hawking, this is used where vegetation is open and the birds can see for long distances. Fantails use a perch to spot swarms of insects and then fly at the prey, snapping several insects at a time.
• flushing. For denser forest. The fantail flies around to disturb insects, flushing them out before eating them.
• Feeding associations. Where the fantail follows another bird or animal to capture insects disturbed by their movements. Fantails frequently follow feeding silvereyes, whiteheads, parakeets and saddlebacks, as well as people.

Threats and conservation

Of all the eggs and chicks fantails produce, only a few survive and grow up. Rats are known to have a significant impact, they not only take eggs and nestling’s but are also large enough to kill adults. Stoats, weasels and Possums will do the same.

Conservation

Reducing predator numbers