Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Identification of gnatcatchers can be difficult, particularly in the Southwest, where there are four species: the Blue-gray, Black-tailed, California and Black-capped. The amount of white in the tail, the range and small differences in the voice offer the best means of separating them. The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is a tiny, slender, long-tailed bird that is blue-gray above, white below and has a white eye ring and broad white borders on its black tail. The song of the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is a thin, musical warble while its call note is a nasal, whining pzzzz.

The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher gleans food (mostly arthropods, insects and some spiders) from the tips of branches, leaf surfaces and bark. It also hawks flying insects from perches. It places its nest saddled on a horizontal limb 4 to 70 feet high (average 25 feet), in a conifer or deciduous tree, but usually in deciduous oaks.

The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher breeds from northern California, Colorado, the southern Great Lakes region, southern Ontario and New Hampshire southward. It winters north to southern California, the Gulf Coast and the Carolinas. This gnatcatcher prefers deciduous woodlands, streamside thickets, live oaks, pinyon-juniper and chaparral.
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Range Map