The Plumbeous Gnatcatcher 
female followed every new movement whether of arm, branch, or camera, 
with alert glances over the side of the nest. And for this purpose she had 
to rise on tiptoe, or crane her neck most ridiculously. But between times 
she settled resolutely to her task, insomuch that her head entirely dis¬ 
appeared and only the tail stuck straight up like a dear little dipper 
handle. This bolstering of good resolution and ostentatious settling to 
eggs in the presence of danger is a feature of irresistible charm to me. 
It is so absolutely appealing to see a midget whom you could crush be¬ 
tween thumb and finger, and who trembles visibly before you, yet shakes 
herself together and dares to die rather than to shirk her immemorial 
charge. 
I took a number of snaps of my lady Graymits at 2^ feet, but she fled 
when an audacious finger pressed against her beak. Then the male bird 
approached and scouted. And if there had been any lingering resentment 
on my part of my lady’s eventual distrust, or any secret thought of pillage, 
the genial optimism of this feathered atom completely disarmed all 
hostility. He came again and again within two feet of my face and he 
said bizz bizz so amiably that I longed to be taken into full confidence. 
“What ho, good Sir Gnatcatcher, do you not need a kindly-disposed 
giant to fetch and carry for you?” 
A giant on guard at the nest might not be amiss, either, for fully half 
the Gnatcatchers’ nests are robbed or torn up by Jays (chiefly Aphelocoma 
California^. |. Wherefore the birds must needs nest twice in a season, and 
in individual cases, no doubt, three or four times. The raising of a Gnat¬ 
catcher family is no sinecure, even when the Jays do happen to leave them 
alone. Mrs. Myers, who has left us a charming account 1 of daily events 
in Gnatcatcher nurseries, tells how one pair fed its brood at the rate of 608 
times a day; and another whose babies were a little older, at the rate of 840 
times. Think of having to serve 840 meals in a day! And they are meals, 
too, for the birds do not stop in their questing forays until they have 
secured a beakful, and this may comprise a dozen or fifteen items. 
No. 158 
Plumbeous Gnatcatcher 
A. 0. U. No. 752 . Polioptila plumbea (Baird). 
Description. —Adult male: Similar to P. ccerulea obscura, but entire top of head, 
including lore (or not) and nearly surrounding eye, glossy black; a conspicuous white 
1 “Nesting Ways of the Western Gnatcatcher,” by Harriet Williams Myers, The Condor, Vol. IX., March, 1901, 
pp. 48-51. 
8*5 
