Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, Polioptila melanura   


Black-tailed Gnatcatcher
I photographed this male Black-tailed Gnatcatcher in Anza Borrego Park, eastern San Diego County, California. These birds of the southwestern deserts are distinguished from the widespread Blue-gray Gnatcatcher by the dark line over the eye in male non-breeding plumage, see above, and by an undertail with extensive black and patches of white, see below, compared to the almost all-white undertail of the Blue-gray. In breeding plumage, Black-tailed males have an extensive black hood, while the Blue-gray male has a black stripe like the non-breeding Black-tailed.

The California Gnatcatcher, found in chaparral along the Southern California coast rather than in desert scrub, is very similar in appearance to the Black-tailed in both plumages, but distinguished by an almost all-black undertail. Before 1988, it was lumped together with the Black-tailed, under that name. When that species was split in two, the birds with less black in their tails had the name "Black-tailed" misleadingly assigned to them;  to compensate for the misnomer you might think of the California as the "Even-More-Black-tailed Gnatcatcher." To me, after several unsuccessful tries to photograph this home-state bird over the years, it is the Nemesis Gnatcatcher.



Black-tailed Gnatcatcher