Fantail Magic
I have always loved fantails or piwakawaka in Maori. I can remember, as a small child, sitting quietly in the bushy corners of my grandparents country garden watching fantails flitting around me catching insects. We have a healthy population of fantail in our garden and have seen a lot of young birds over this summer so it must have been a good breeding season. In a good season a pair of fantails can raise up to six broods.
They are very nimble flyers and I have often been fascinated watching their aerobatic antics as they catch insects on the wing. The image below is a single fantail flying around the top of a tree catching insects. He was too far away for good close up shots but I coundn't stop myself taking photos. It wasn't until I pulled the images off the camera that I realised what a great sequence I had as it looped around the top of the tree so I merged the images together to produce the image below. In this sequence, the fantail comes in flying from left to right disappears out of the frame then came back looping over the top of the tree and then diving down behind it.
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