As I was finishing one of my last kayak outings and heading back to the parking lot, I noticed this little bird above me. After watching it’s flurry of activity for a moment, I discovered it was working on building a nest in the fork of a small tree. I sat still and watched a couple of minutes and photographed it’s activity as it would fly in to the nest, then back out into surrounding trees, just to reappear at the nest. While this activity was occuring, I wasn’t sure of this little guy’s ID. I forwarded a few images to a good birder friend of mine, who identified it as a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea). I had seen these little birds several times, but they are quite small and typically flit about in the upper reaches of the trees, where they are hard to see well.
In the above image, he is actively building the nest, camouflaging it by adding lichen and tree bark to the exterior of the nest. In the next image, I have cropped and enlarged the above image so that you can see his artwork a little better:
After a few minutes, he decided to take a break from nestbuilding and flew to a nearby tree where he flitted around for a short while:
