Black-capped Gnatcatcher Family

An amazingly birdy day out with John (from Ohio) and John (from Florida) produced on the order of 90 species, including many of their targets for this quick visit. California Gulch rewarded our considerable effort getting in with Five-striped Sparrows and singing Montezuma Quail, and Sycamore Canyon’s Rufous-capped Warbler finally sang, chipped, and emerged into the open after a vigil that threatened to stretch into lunch time.

But it was Montosa Canyon that yielded the day’s most significant sighting. I was about to give up when I heard the slight mewling of Black-capped Gnatcatcher, and there in the twigs in front of us sat a fledgling, then another, then another, then another! At least one heavily tail-molting adult was in attendance on them, a bird with no obvious black in the head. The young ‘uns fed themselves on eggs and tiny insects scraped from twigs, but they weren’t yet too grown-up to beg when their parent captured a big caterpillar, which the most importunate of the siblings managed to swallow whole. It won’t be long before they go their separate ways, but today, still fluffy, the fledglings occasionally paused to ‘cuddle’ on a branch, pressed shoulder to shoulder like stuffed animals on a shelf.