Willie Wagtail:

Almost everyone must be familiar with this little black and white Fantail whose name expresses his habit of constantly wagging his long upright tail from side to side and sometimes fanning it.  The Willie Wagtail lives all over Australia except in the rain forest and in heavily timbered areas.   It is a very common resident of open forests and scrub, farming areas and wooded watercourses, even near creeks in the dry inland regions.  It is also a very familiar bird in city parks and gardens and is quite fearless and friendly.

Like other Fantails it is active and restless, never still for long.  It  will sit on a vantage point watching for insects - mostly flies - and quickly snapping them up on the wing.  In the country it will sit perched on the backs of cattle and is said to destroy cattle ticks.  It is said also to sit on the back of crocodiles in the far north and even to picks scraps from between their teeth.

Willie Wagtail has  an attractive and melodious whistling call which sounds something like 'sweet pretty little creature': this call can often be heard late into the night.  It has also a scolding alarm call of chicka-chicka-chicka.  Although normally a trusting little bird, it becomes very pugnacious when it is nesting and will try to drive even a hawk from its territory.  The nest is a cup beautifully moulded of fine strips of bark and grass, tightly woven and bound with so much cobweb that it appears to be made of it.  The Wagtail  has a variety of nesting sites, usually quite low - on a horizontal limb of a tree hidden by foliage, attached to a fencing wire or house rafter or under a verandah.  It may raise up to four broods in one season.  It often uses the  same nest, rebuilding it the following year.  When nesting in a tree, Wagtails often nest in the same tree as a pair of Mudlarks.