Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

About the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is a tiny, slim songbird - blue-gray above, white below, with a long black-and-white tail it flips and fans constantly, and a thin white eye-ring. Breeding males add a narrow black brow line. The whole bird weighs about as much as a nickel and a penny together.

Gnatcatchers are perpetual motion, working outer twigs and leaf clusters for small insects and spiders, hovering and darting with the tail swinging like a rudder. The call is a thin, wheezy "spee" that usually announces the bird before it is seen. Pairs build a beautiful lichen-shingled cup nest saddled on a branch, bound with spider silk.

In Texas they breed statewide in open woodland from spring through summer, and a good number linger through winter in the southern half of the state.