Volume 21, Plate X / Ornithology (Birds)

White-Shafted Fantail

Rhipidura flabellifera

The best known fantail received from Australia, dark sepia brown above approaching black, with pure white shafts and tips contrasting the blackish tail, white chin and eye stripe, a narrow brown collar, and light buff under plumage, the bill remarkably short and thickly bristled. Common about Paramatta throughout the year, it darts from small trees on its prey, spreading its tail like a fan and tumbling over before returning to the same twig.