It’s gray, it’s black, but thankfully (for the residents of the US desert southwest) lacks a “strange, mewing, cat-like” call. So not a Gray Catbird!, but a female (probably) Black-tailed Gnatcatcher:
And on a lighter note (pun intended), it’s a bonus section of bad owl photography! It was 5AM at the BIRDS field station, just the barest hint of dawn in the east. Outside, the calls of two Great Horned Owls! (“Hoot, hoot.” “Hoot, hoot.”) What else to do but run outside with the “giant camera completely inappropriate for low light photography” for some long-exposure, hand-held shots? Nikon 600mm f6.3 lens @ 1/8-1/10 second, ISO 25,600, handheld w/o flash. Amazingly (after a lot of post-processing), might actually be able to tell these are owls! (Note the nice talon detail.) Also interesting to see these owls were perched on nearby power lines. (Somewhere there’s of a picture of both owls together, which will be posted once it’s found someday in all the memory cards from Arizona.)
Coming up soon, more gloomy photography!
Loved the beady eyed gnat catcher!
and, nice shots of the owl! This Team Member hears them, but never sees them (except for the rare time when we were able to take really good pics of one of them in the mesquite nearby.)