Guide to North American Birds
Conservation status Endangered. The small amount of remaining habitat in California is being rapidly turned into housing developments. Nesting attempts often fail, partly because of cowbird parasitism.
Family Gnatcatchers
Habitat Coastal sage scrub. In limited range on California coast, found only in coastal sage scrub. This is a habitat of low shrubs (mostly 3-6' tall), generally dominated by California sagebrush, buckwheat, salvia, and prickly-pear cactus. In Baja California, also found in other kinds of scrub.
Until the late 1980s, this bird was regarded as just a local form of the Black-tailed Gnatcatcher. With its recognition as a full species, it also became an endangered species: its limited habitat along the southern California coast is being taken over by housing tracts and other developments. California Gnatcatchers live in coastal sage scrub, a low shrubby habitat that is also home to other specialized animals and plants.

Photo Gallery

Feeding Behavior

Forages by moving about actively in shrubs and low trees, searching for insects. Sometimes hovers to pick items from foliage. Unlike Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, rarely flies out to catch insects in mid-air.


Eggs

4, sometimes 3-5. Bluish white, finely dotted with reddish brown. Incubation is by both parents, about 14 days. On hot days, adults may stand on nest and shade the eggs. Young: Fed by both parents. Young leave the nest about 15-16 days after hatching.


Young

Fed by both parents. Young leave the nest about 15-16 days after hatching.

Diet

Mostly insects. Feeds on a wide variety of small insects, including true bugs, beetles, caterpillars, scale insects, wasps, ants, flies, moths, small grasshoppers, and many others; also some spiders. May eat small berries at times.


Nesting

Adults often remain together in pairs throughout the year on permanent territories. In California, nesting season is from late February to mid-July. Brown-headed Cowbirds often lay eggs in nests of this bird, and the gnatcatchers may wind up raising only young cowbirds. Nest site is in dense low shrub, usually less than 4' above the ground. Nest (built by both sexes) is a compact cup of grass, bark strips, leaves, spiderwebs, plant down, and other items, lined with fine plant fibers, feathers, and animal hair.

Illustration © David Allen Sibley.
Learn more about these drawings.

Text © Kenn Kaufman, adapted from
Lives of North American Birds

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Migration

Permanent resident.

  • All Seasons - Common
  • All Seasons - Uncommon
  • Breeding - Common
  • Breeding - Uncommon
  • Winter - Common
  • Winter - Uncommon
  • Migration - Common
  • Migration - Uncommon

See a fully interactive migration map for over 450 bird species on the Bird Migration Explorer.

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Songs and Calls

Similar to calls of the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (not the Black-tailed), but more prolonged and cat-like.
Audio © Lang Elliott, Bob McGuire, Kevin Colver, Martyn Stewart and others.
Learn more about this sound collection.

How Climate Change Will Reshape the Range of the California Gnatcatcher

Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.

Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.

Climate Threats Near You
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Climate threats facing the California Gnatcatcher

Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.