Late in the afternoon of a very hot Christmas day, I escaped with my camera into the relative cool of the rainforest. 

I wanted to check on a nesting pair of shining flycatchers I'd spotted a few weeks earlier.

These pretty little birds are common throughout the block.  They are nearly always in pairs: the male a gleaming black/blue; the female an equally pretty white, brown and black.  They breed in very neatly constructed and well-camouflaged little nests built directly over water.

This was the scene when I first encountered the flycatchers:

The nest was set up over a channel running between two parts of the main billabong.  It was deep in the shadows under a canopy of vines and palm fronds.  Even from nearby, it was hard to spot - which presumably was the whole point.

(I'd actually spotted the nest when I was hoping to get another look at a golden tree snake I'd seen in the same area a few days earlier.

Golden tree snake

On reflection, it's quite possible the snake was sizing up the nest.)

The male and female flycatchers were taking turns bringing little spiders and insects back to the nest.  

Every now and again a hungry chick's head would pop into view. 

mother and child 1 (Shining Flycatcher) ***

On Christmas Day, I could see no activity at the nest, so I wandered downstream along the edge of the billabong looking for other potential pics. 

I'd walked maybe 10 metres when I got swooped by a male flycatcher.  It was not a frenetic salvo (nothing like the magpie terrors of my childhood) - more a polite warning -  so I backed off a little, sat on a rotting log and tried to work out what was going on.

Soon I spotted what I initially thought was the female of the pair.  She was fluttering up and down from a perch on tree roots another 20 metres or so further along the bank.

I was able to get a much closer look using the long lens on my camera. An adult female flycatcher was there, but all the fluttering was being done by a fledgling. 

It was clearly very early days in the chick's flying career.  It would buzz its little wings furiously and every now and again get airborne for a few seconds before plummeting back into the tangle of roots. Mum and dad were hovering nearby.

If you've ever seen someone trying to operate a drone for the first time, you will be able to visualise what happened next.

On one of her leaps of faith, something caused the chick to tilt in the direction of the billlabong.  All of a sudden, her upwards momentum turned sideways and she careered about 15 metres towards the deepest part of the pool - crash landing into the water before clambering up onto a tree root just above the surface.

This was the scene soon afterwards:

That part of the billabong is teeming with potential threats to a bite-sized flycatcher.  Apart from the airborne perils (spangled drongos, herons, darters, sea eagles) there are freshwater crocs, monitors, large turtles and even juvenile barramundi that could have gobbled her up in an instant. 

Mum was close by and clearly concerned.

She was coming and going regularly; each time perching above the chick before flying down and hovering much closer and then darting away.

I thought at the time that she was trying to demonstrate what the chick needed to do.

But the little ball of feathers just stayed there - seemingly very calm and completely oblivious to the danger.  (In the time I was watching, I saw several ominous bubble trails circling around her, as well as the occasional bow wave of something substantial swimming just below the surface.)

After about an hour, mum was doing another series of her hovering routines when the chick started flapping its little wings every now and then.

Finally - and I'm sure not completely intentionally - she was airborne and off to a safe perch on the far bank (mum still watching on intently).

I assumed that the chick had finally got mum's message, but (as so often happens with photography) when I looked closely at the photos, they told a different - and much more straightforward - story.

I realised that each time the mother had been buzzing the chick, she'd had a freshly caught insect in her beak. 

And the chick was responding in pretty much the same way as a few weeks earlier in the nest. 

Only this time, mum had no intention of feeding her baby while it was marooned in the middle of a death trap - she was making it fly for its life.