Birding in Australia: Shiny Flycatcher...

Today I am sharing pictures of a wonderful little bird that was shown by Mr Murray 'The Boatman' during our Daintree river ride. 

The bird described as Shiny Flycatcher at some places and Shining Flycatcher at other - is a flycatcher where the male is entirely glossy with iridescent blue-black colour and the female has a Glossy blue-black head and a bright rufous chest.

Shiny Flycatcher, Male

Shiny Flycatcher, Male

Shiny Flycatcher, Male

Shiny Flycatcher, Male

 The female can be easily mixed up with Asian-paradise Flycatcher female had I spotted it by myself.

Shiny Flycatcher, female

You will have to pardon my photographs that are not the best I could take as the boat was moving, the light under the rainforest canopy was nothing to talk about and the ISO had to be ramped up to 1600 to get meaningful pictures. The bird inhabits mangroves,rainforest, pandaus, creeks and swamps. We saw the two three birds all over the perches over water and among the stilt roots of mangroves. The call was clean 'whit', 'whit', 'whit'.

Shiny Flycatcher female in a nest.

We were also lucky to see two nests, which were typical nest that I have seen so many times of Asian-paradise Flycatcher, basically a upright fork, but in this case both over water. The nest was rounded cup of bark strips and looked like bounded with spider web.