In spring and summer, migratory Rufous Fantails frequent the east coast of Australia and are vagrant in drier country west of the Great Dividing Range and in Tasmania. The species is common in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Guam.
A small, active bird with a distinctive bright orange-rufous rump and a continuously fanned pale-tipped tail, the Rufous Fantail has a black and white breast grading into a white chin and throat.
They are busy little birds that feed on small insects in lower tree canopies and are almost constantly in motion. Seeking out insects among tree branches and trunks, they twist and turn with a fanned tail and an audible click of the bill when snatching their prey, sometimes hopping between foliage or foraging on the ground.
Habitat is typically moist shaded understorey in dense wet eucalypt forest and rainforest. They prefer deep shade close to the ground, foraging at low and mid-levels in dense vegetation. In drier woodlands they may be seen alongside streams.
Strongly migratory, the Rufous Fantail travels to south-eastern Australia in Spring to breed, then heads north in Autumn-Winter, leaving Victoria and NSW for the warmer climates of Cape York, Torres Strait Islands and southern New Guinea. During migration periods, the Rufous Fantail may be noted in more open habitats or urban areas.
The song of the Rufous Fantail is a pleasant high-pitched tinkling with ascending whistles; also, a single or double ‘chip’. Compared to the more familiar Grey Fantail its singing is consistently softer and higher pitched with fewer grating notes.
In spring breeding season, the Rufous Fantail builds a small compact cup nest, using fine grasses bound with spider webs, with the bottom of the nest tapering to a long stem. The nest is suspended from a tree fork about 5m from the ground. One or two broods may be raised each season with both male and female sharing the tasks of nest-building, incubation and feeding the young.
