Yellow-bellied Fairy-fantail

The yellow-bellied fairy-fantail is a tiny, active forest bird with bright yellow underparts, olive upperparts and a sharply contrasting black eye-stripe. A white wing bar and broad black tail tipped white flash as it twists among foliage and repeatedly spreads its tail. Despite its English name and fantail-like movements, genetic research places it with the fairy flycatchers in family Stenostiridae, as the only species in the genus Chelidorhynx (Fuchs et al. 2009; Wikipedia, general species account).

Its range follows the Himalayas and northeastern Indian hills through Myanmar and Thailand to Vietnam. The species occupies montane and submontane forest and makes seasonal movements between elevations. Birds forage energetically among leaves and outer branches, frequently joining mixed-species flocks with leaf warblers, tits and black-faced warblers, especially in winter. Their restless wing-flicking, tail-fanning and short aerial pursuits help expose and capture small prey in the foliage (Birds of the World summary, as reported on Wikipedia's general species account).