New Zealand fantails

On our visit to New Zealand I have been fascinated by all the different birds we have seen. We saw the New Zealand fantail on many of our walks and even in the garden. Their Maori name is Piwakawaka which I also quite like.

They are similar to our British tit family in size but they have a fantail. The breast colour varies from a russet brown to a sooty black. The tails are flickering silver and black with the centre feather quite often black although we did see both pure black fantails and pure while fantails. The two distinct types are the common pied fantail and the black fantail (less common 4%). The common fantail has distinct flashes of white, over the eyes, under the beak and on the wings. They use their fantails for flight, feeding and display. They can use the fantail to sweep across foliage and dislodge insects which they eat. We noticed that they were often seen in pairs.. They tend to flit from perch to perch and they are quite agile in flight twisting and turning. They are quite difficult to photograph as a result.

We saw black fantails on the Kepler track between the control tower to rainbow reach. The majority of the time we saw the common fantails.