In my opinion, one of the most difficult birds to photograph in North Carolina are the Blue-gray Gnatcatchers. It’s not that they’re particularly uncommon during the spring(quite the opposite actually), it’s just that they are small and constantly on the move.
In fact, these tiny birds hardly ever sit still so I’m always grateful to catch a proper look at one at rest, even if it’s nothing more than a second or two.

Although they will hunt for all kinds of insects they don’t actually eat many gnats (unfortunately, lol!) as their name implies.
In fact, their favorite food are spiders and lucky for them we’ve got plenty of those here in the Tarheel state for them to find.
As seen in these photos, Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers will glean for arachnids in the mid to upper canopies of trees, raids insects from spiderwebs, and are even known to use their webs as nesting material.

These lovely little ones arrive in late March and stick around until September. The best spots to find Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are in habitats containing a mix of deciduous forests and wetlands, ponds, lakes and rivers.
They are particularly active in the morning hours as they need to make up for the loss of calories spent while sleeping by hunting for insects as soon as the sun rises.

Photos by @sally_siko of @birdwatching_nc on the badassssss full frame beast of an SLR, the mighty @canonusa
#5Ds