Grey or Gray?

On a midmorning break from keyboard work I walked out on the deck and noticed something small frenetically moving all over the place in one of the Mountain blueberry bushes in the yard. I hunted the binoculars and as I moved around the livingroom in front of all the windows it saw me and flew to a dogwood 30 feet further away. I was amazed at how small this bird was...and how blue...sky blue, if I had to put a name to the color.

When I got the big binocs I could tell it wasn't a bird I was familiar with, but it was handsomely beautiful. I found it easily in the bird books but I have to say I haven't seen a single photo that does it justice. No wonder since there would be no way for me to get a decent shot as the bird was a bundle of energy and never slowed down as it searched from branch to branch for insects. So now I have the Blue Gray Gnatcatcher as a visitor in the gorge. I wonder how much the hard freeze has hurt its food supply?

The picture above is from the Fernbank Science Center. A million years ago I almost worked there. At one time nearly all their displayed reptiles were collected by me.

This is a drab photo of a really handsome bird that has to be really tough to photograph. The one I saw definitely had a noticeable sky blue color, so much so that I thought I had a cerulean warbler in the yard.


http://www.audubon.org/bird/boa/F7_G4a.html

Listen to it sing