See this little guy? This is a New Zealand Fantail - also known as Piwakawaka in the Maori language. They are extremely curious and will follow people around flittering their wings and chirping. Usually in Maori mythology they are thought of as being death or news of a death from the Gods to the people. We don't see alot of them in urban areas, they seem to prefer native forests. You can hear the chirps by the different types of Fantails here.
11 comments:
A song and sight we really miss.
Beautiful wee birds, I always smile when I see one :)
...things don't need to be big to be special.
Lovely wee birds but I hadn't realised there were so many different ones.
My mum always let them into the house to catch all the flies and spiders. She even put a cloth under the light shade where they prefered to perch and they would be daily visitors. Generations of them must have passed on the teaching to go into that house because every year there seemed to be an adult and a new batch of youngsters - both the pied and black ones. Apparently a clutch can produce both colours. That was way out in the middle of the Canterbury Plaiins.
Oh they're so sweet Amy, how on earth did they get such a bad mythological wrap 😊
Love those little fantails and love that you now call them by the Maori name
What a beauty this little bird is.
It is encouraging to see a species native to New Zealand given that there are so many invasives, often deliberately introduced by nostalgic settlers unfortunately. It is a very attractive little bird too.
I loved this little bird. One (or perhaps more - difficult to tell them apart) used to come into The Cottage and sit on the chair at the table opposite me. He would wander round (well, flit rather than wander) the Cottage and look for insects that I couldn't even see. The strange thing is that, unlike any other bird that came in, it never flew into the windows or ranch-sliders and seemed instinctively to know when they were open or closed.
This was fun to read and also the comments! I wish we had them..id love to have a sweet bird like that come in and visit! (Although I would try to ignore the Maori belief in this instance!)
Post a Comment