Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Polioptila caeruleaOrder: PASSERIFORMESFamily: Old World Warblers and Gnatcatchers (Sylviidae)

General

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Small, flycatcher-like perching bird with blue-gray upperparts, white underparts, and prominent white eye-ring. Wings are dark. Black tail is long and white-edged. Female tends toward grayer tones.

Range and Habitat

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Breeds from northern California, Colorado, southern Great Lakes region, southern Ontario, and New Hampshire southward. Spends winters from southern California to the Gulf coast and the Carolinas. Preferred habitats include deciduous woodlands, streamside thickets, live oaks, pinyon-juniper, and chaparral.

Listen to Call

Voice Text

"zee-you- zee-you"

Interesting Facts

The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is the northernmost occurring species of gnatcatcher, and the only truly migratory one.

By flicking its white-edged tail from side to side, the gnatcatcher may scare up hiding insects. They remove the wings of larger insects and beat large prey on a perch.

Their breeding range is expanding northward, especially in eastern North America.

Author

Gary Owen Dick

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Bird Call Credits: The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Martyn Stewart, http://www.naturesound.org, Redmond, Washington USA. The reuse or copying of bird calls in this database is strictly forbidden.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Small, flycatcher-like perching bird, blue-gray upperparts, white underparts, prominent white eye-ring. Wings are dark. Black tail is long and white-edged. Forages in thickets, trees and shrubs for insects, their eggs and larvae. Weak fluttering flight on shallow wing beats.

● Song: "zee-you- zee-you"

● Foraging & Feeding: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Eats aphids, hemipterans, beetles, moths, butterflies, flies, ants, bees, wasps, and spiders; forages by moving up and down outer branches of trees or shrubs.

● Breeding & nesting: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Four or five pale blue eggs, usually with brown flecks, are laid in a small cup nest of plant down and spider webs decorated with lichens and fastened to a horizontal branch at almost any height above the ground. Both parents incubate eggs for 13 days.

● Similar species: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Other male gnatcatchers have variable amounts of black (depending on species, season, and age) on crown. Other female gnatcatchers have brown-tinged tails.

Flight Pattern

Weak fluttering flight with shallow wing beats.

● Range & Habitat: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Breeds from northern California, Colorado, southern Great Lakes region, southern Ontario, and New Hampshire southward. Spends winters from southern California to the Gulf coast and the Carolinas. Preferred habitats include deciduous woodlands, streamside thickets, live oaks, pinyon-juniper, and chaparral.

^BreedingMonogamous, Solitary nester

^Population

^MigrationMigratory

^Weight0.2 Ounces

Field Guide to Birds of North America