#3775 - Rhipidura fuliginosa fuliginosa
- South Island Fantail
I got much better photos of them elsewhere on the trip, because, like their cousins the Willy-Wagtails of Australia (Rhipidura leucophrys), they fear neither God nor Man, and will get up close so they can scream abuse at you, other fantails, and the world.
They don't fear demigods, either - the bulbous eyes and erratic flying behaviour of the bird is attributed to being squeezed by Māui for not revealing the whereabouts of the fire goddess Mahuika, one of his ancestors. Later, when Māui attempted to achieve immortality by climbing through the night goddess Hine-nui-te-pō, a group of fantails laughed at him as he entered her vagina. She woke up and crushed him to death with her obsidian vaginal teeth. When not frustrating trickster figures, they're messengers from the gods, usually reporting deaths.
When they're not busy doing that they eat insects, such as the ones kicked up by humans.
There used to be four subspecies, but the Lowe Howe Island one is extinct. R. f. fuliginosa lives on the South Island, R. f. placabilis on the North Island, and R. f. penita on the Chatham Islands. Local names include pīwakawaka, tīwakawaka or piwaiwaka for the mainland birds, and tchitake for the Chatham Island subspecies.
The latter is very close to the bird's usual call, and the ta rē Moriori name, used by the indigenous people of the Chathams prior to their mass murder and enslavement by Māori from Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama iwi who arrived on the islands in a hijacked whaling vessel in 1835. There remain just under a thousand people who identify as Moriori, and efforts are ongoing to revive the language.
Moeraki Boulders, Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand.
