{"id":20892,"date":"2012-09-03T06:47:50","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T04:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=20892"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:30:22","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:30:22","slug":"fantail-piwakawaka-rhipidura-fuliginosa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/fantail-piwakawaka-rhipidura-fuliginosa\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantail, Piwakawaka, Rhipidura fuliginosa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our daughter Anne is visiting for a week and I took her and our three Border Terriers over to Lee Bay to give the dogs a run on the beach. And on the road back came across a trio of fantails playing above the road, and I had my camera for once.<\/p>\n

Fantails are really difficult to photograph. A bit like the Riflemanthey have the avian equivalent of ADHD syndrome. Never sit still, and even while perched they are continuously hopping about through 180\/270 deg. And of course when flying they use their huge tail to flit about chasing insects.<\/p>\n

The small flock I found were quite close, but as it was a dull day my camera had issues with exposure and shutter speed. But on the upside has a very good burst rate. I tend to just “keep the finger on the button” and will do a sequence of 15 to 20 frames over 3 or 4 seconds before the buffer fills. Using a high speed card helps enormously. A slower card would probably limit a burst to perhaps 5 to 8 shots. Add in a stabilised lens and out of the 50 or 60 photos I took, actually managed to “keep” around 5 resonable images.<\/p>\n

These birds were all “pied”. The all black morph is much harder to find, although there is at least one living around Observation Rock. But as usual when I do see that one it’s sans camera. A couple of years ago I came across a pair with a juvenile… all black. I had never seen a black pair, let alone a trio and have heard the ration pied:black is someting like 40:1. Interestingly there doesn’t seem to any “half pied” birds. The “pied” are pied and the blacks are totally black, not a sign of a white feather.<\/p>\n

This Black Fantail was filmed on Ulva Island some time ago. The darting flight is absolutely typical of these insect eaters.<\/p>\n

\"Fantail<\/a>
Fantail with tail fully spread. This huge tail area gives the bird high maneuverability for chasing flying insects.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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I have never seen them feed on other than flying insects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our daughter Anne is visiting for a week and I took her and our three Border Terriers over to Lee Bay to give the dogs a run on the beach. And on the road back came across a trio of fantails playing above the road, and I had my camera for once. Fantails are really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":2192493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/IMG_3988.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[1211],"class_list":["post-20892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-fantail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}