Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

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