It was an offer too hard to pass up. A reader had what I consider the most stunning of all Australian bird nests – that of the grey fantail – literally on her doorstep in Sandy Bay. And what’s more, there were two tiny nestlings flexing their wings, ready to fly.
The nest is notable for its shape. Incredibly it resembles a wine glass at first sight, a grassy bowl that tapers to a stem and flattened base.
This one, tucked away among the lush leaves of a laurel tree metres from the reader’s back door, was more impressive than others I had seen. The nest is usually attached to a thin branch but the Sandy Bay construction was built around a slim twiglet which had given added stability during the high winds we have had recently. A mass of fine grass, bark and moss was bound together with strands of spider’s web, which shone silver in the late-morning light.
Grey fantails are common in our more leafy suburbs at this time of year and with a little patience and perseverance nests are not hard to find. I listen for calling fantails to locate their breeding territories and I suppose their predators do too, but somehow most fantails manage to survive.
The nests are superbly camouflaged, though, and are overlooked by the fantail’s foes hunting for an easy meal of eggs and chicks in spring and summer – currawongs, ravens and grey shrike-thrushes among them.
Although I was keen to see the fantail young, I was too late. The reader’s concern that the tiny birds might topple out of the nest and come to grief was misplaced. A rescue mission was not necessary. I did not have to place the chicks in a safe spot so their parents could find and feed them, the accepted practice for fledglings falling to the ground.
An empty nest and all about me the cheerful sound of fantail song. Although I couldn’t see the chicks, obviously well concealed in another bush, the parents were busy hawking insects, to give them protein to build feather and bone.
Although named grey fantails, the male is feathered in a slate-blue livery, with intricate black markings on the face. Females are grey-brown.
Fantails always appear nervous and flighty on the wing, fanning their black and white tails, and in country districts in Tasmania they are known as “cranky fans”.
The fantails are more common in summer, when the woods ring to their thin, descending melodic calls. About half of the population migrates to the mainland at the end of the breeding season, at a time when insect supply diminishes in Tasmania.
They’re always a grand sight and at the start of the New Year I raised a wine glass to wish the cranky fans safe flying in 2025.