Fantail feeding baby fantails
Fantails are about 15 to 18 cm long, specialist aerial feeders, and named as “fantails”. When the tail is folded it is rounded at the end, but when spread in display or aerial foraging it has a characteristic fan shape that gives the family its name. Fantails are highly active birds, with several of the smaller species continuously on the move; even when perched they continue to rock back and forth, spin 180° on the spot, wag their tail from side to side or fan and unfan it. In flight they are highly agile and undertake highly aerobatic and intricate looping flights while using their fanned tail to catch insects in flight. The nest, a small cup of grass stems neatly bound together in spider silk, takes around 10 days to construct. Many species incorporate a trailing tail into the base of the nest; this possibly breaks up the shape of the nest, although little other effort is made to conceal the nest. To compensate for the high visibility of the nest fantails will aggressively defend their chicks from potential predators. In the following video you can see a mother fantail feeding her babies. This video was taken by Canon SX40 hs.