Happy happy joy joy: Grey Fantail

Week 4 of lockdown and this is getting a little bit trickier. I can, ah, tell you probably all you’d want to know about Ted Bundy, have pricked my hand and somehow my leg, more times than I knew was possible learning embroidery and have been pimping out my Spiny Leaf Insects new enclosure. My boredom is their gain, it would seem. That is, if they like fairy lights as much as I do. (Of course they do) 🤣

Thankfully we’re still having relatively sunny days so I’ve been able to spend some time on the deck hoping for visitors of the animal variety and today this gorgeous little Grey Fantail spent a good hour or so flittering around. Actually they’re total acrobats, in a Willy Wagtail kind of way, launching out of the tree, diving towards the ground and then soaring back up again, chasing tiny insects. You can even hear the snapping of their beaks at they grab at them mid flight!

It’s breeding season from July to January and I’ve been hearing these little guys everywhere in the yard lately. I figure they’re on the lookout for someone to make more Grey Fantails with. Fine by me, because they’ve got this sweet little melodic chattering, happy kind of call (note to self: start filming calls for the website!).

They do, of course as the name implies, spend a lot of time fanning their tail out. Usually as they’re heading up a tree branch: hop once, fan tail, hop again, this time in the opposite direction, fan tail, lean forward, stare directly at the wanna be photographer, hop again and flit off too fast for photos. But you get the idea.

Grey Fantail – Northern Illawarra