Out of the Archives: Black-tailed Gnatcatcher at Joshua Tree National Park

I've been watching birds in a more serious manner for around five years now, ever since I came into the possession of a high-zoom camera. But the roots have been there for many years earlier, especially when I was exploring new and exotic places. In 2011, I was in Joshua Tree National Park for the first time in a number of years, and there were birds that caught my eye at the time.

I was looking through my photo archives today because of the terrible act of arson and vandalism that took place last week, when someone burned several acres of the Oasis of Mara at the north edge of the park. The palms were beautiful, and I'm sad that someone is so depraved as to want to destroy them (an arrest has been made, but it won't bring the palms back any time soon). As I worked my way through the shots, I came across these pictures of a bird I couldn't immediately identify. In fact, I flipped through my copy of Sibley's twice and still couldn't identify it. I thought maybe some kind of flycatcher, but I skipped past the single page of gnatcatchers, so it took the intrepid commenters of Birding California on Facebook to set me straight. It's a Black-tailed Gnatcatcher (Polioptila melanura).

The Black-tailed Gnatcatcher is a true desert denizen. It rarely drinks water, getting most of its moisture from the bugs it eats. They dwell in the native shrubs of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts, and thus are rarely seen in the cities. As such, their population level is a fair barometer of the health of the desert ecosystem.

It will be interesting to see what other birds are hiding in my photo archives...