It seems like I am increasingly spending my time trying to track small birds as they energetically flit about in a tangle of newly-emerged leaves. In their aggressive foraging for food, they rarely seem to pause and pose for me on isolated branches, so I am figuring out ways to integrate the foliage into my photos.
Here are a couple of images of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers (Polioptila caerulea) from this past weekend at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge that show not only the birds, but also a part of their environment. As I was doing a little research on this gnatcatcher on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, I was a bit surprised to learn that gnats do not form a significant part of the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher’s diet—they eat all kinds of insects and spiders.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog 