—Nicholas Del Grosso
The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is the only Gnatcatcher found in the
continental United States. It is one of my favorite little birds,
measuring 3.9 to 5.1 inches overall length. Like small dogs it has a
Napoleonic complex; it is very pugnacious and will defend its
territory aggressively. It makes itself known by its soft but
insistent calls which are a raspy peweez or
screez sound. If you don’t see it in
the leafy understory just play a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher call on your
cell phone and watch the fun begin. In the early spring the male will
aggressively respond to the call in defense of its chosen territory.
It will fly to the sound and hop from branch to branch giving an
irritated and loudly insistent call with its tail held upright
looking for the intruder. Unlike most birds responding to a call it
is not frightened by people, in fact it will even respond
aggressively with the same calls when a person enters its territory,
so it’s an easy find in the spring woods. This little guy even
looks a little irate. If vocal displays and posturing fail to deter
the intruder it will charge the interloper and chase it as far as 70
feet. If this fails to drive the challenger from the defending
male’s territory the chase will escalate into midair
confrontations, with the two birds climbing steeply, breast to breast
snapping at each other.

This bird is a denizen of broad leaf and mixed deciduous forests, it
is an edge species, so you do not have to venture far into the deep
woods when looking for this bird. It shuns coniferous woods but is
very fond of ash, maple, oak, willow and cottonwood especially if
they line creeks, streams, rivers or lakes. It is bird often found in
moist areas.
The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is a year round resident of the extremely
southern United States, especially the coastal forest areas of the
Gulf States from Texas to Florida. About 35-percent of the population
winter in these areas, while 65-percent will over winter in Mexico
and Central America. The total population is estimated at 160 million
and 74-percent will migrate from the wintering areas and breed in the
continental United States from coast to coast. It is rare for this
bird to migrate as far as Canada or the central northern states.
However, climate change has influenced the Gnatcatcher; during the
past quarter-century, it has shifted its nesting range northward
about 200 miles in concert with increasing average temperatures.
The name of this bird is a perfect match for its appearance. It has a
blue-gray back with a grayish white belly and a black tail with white
edging. The male has a more vibrant color then the faded female and
is crowned with a black V on its forehead. Both sexes have a white
eye ring. As you can see from the following pictures the Blue-gray
gnatcatcher is a handsome bird.

These are tiny slim birds with long grayish black legs a thin
straight bill and a long tail. They are a perpetual motion machine
hopping and sidling in dense outer foliage as they flick their tail
from side to side, scaring up insects and chasing them. Most of the
time the Gnatcatcher feeds from a perch, but it can hover to glean
insects from the foliage or hawk a flying insect it has scared and
return to its perch and begin foraging again. The Gnatcatcher is an
opportunistic forager, even taking food from spider webs. Generally
it feeds on a varied diet of treehoppers, froghoppers, leafhoppers,
plant bugs, leaf beetles, weevils, wolf spiders, caterpillars and
grasshoppers. Small prey is swallowed alive, while large prey has
their wings torn off and their bodies beaten on a perch prior to
being eaten. The Gnatcatcher uses a very effective tenderizing
technique making the larger prey more palatable. Parents generally
feed the young the same prey, offering progressively larger prey as
the chicks mature.
Blue-gray Gnatcatchers arrive in Oklahoma in early April. They are
common in the forests of eastern Oklahoma, although less common in
the west, it has been known to breed in suitable habitat all the way
to the edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle. The only counties where the
Gnatcatcher has not been observed is Greer County in the southwest
and Texas County in the Panhandle.

When the male arrives on the breeding ground he chooses his territory
and begins to look for a female to pair bond with. After the
selection process is completed he tours the territory with her to
select nest sites. Once the sites have been surveyed, both sexes will
aid in the building of the first nest. They collect materials and it
will take about two weeks to complete the nest. Like building a house
they start with a solid foundation of fibrous material like plant
stems, bark stripes and grass, held together by spider and
caterpillar silk, the outer edges are built with lichen and silk. The
nest will be built on a limb or the crotch of a branch and will look
like a tree knot. It will be 2 to 3 inches across. The cup will be
1.5 inches wide and will be lined with plant down, paper, cocoons and
hair or feathers. Here on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve bison shed
is often found in the cup because it easily available during April.
During the breeding season up to seven nests will be used. After the
first nest is occupied the male will construct the additional nests
to counteract the effects of predation, mite infestations, or Cowbird
parasitism. Adult Gnatcatchers will often attack intruding Cowbirds,
but once they lay eggs in the Gnatcatcher’s nest the
Gnatcatcher will abandon the nest because they do not have the
ability to puncture the Cowbird’s hard eggs and few if any
Gnatcatchers will fledge in this type of situation. These subsequent
nests are built by the male using recycled materials from previous
nests. The female will then finish the interior with softer
materials. Gnatcatchers will double brood, usually the clutch size is
three to five eggs and they are pale blue with reddish or brown
spots. Then both sexes will incubate the eggs for eleven to fifteen
days. After hatching both the male and female will provision the
young Gnatcatchers. Gnatcatcher eggs are vulnerable to a number of
predators and can be taken by Jays, Magpies, Woodpeckers, snakes,
Crows, Grackles, Raccoons, Squirrels and Chipmunks. In defense of
their nest Gnatcatchers will mob predators by themselves or they will
join other small birds such as Chickadees and Kinglets in preemptive
strikes to chase the predator away from the area.
Gnatcatchers can often be seen on the trails along Sand Creek in the
woods. As you approach their nest trees they will loudly scold you.
Typically they will be in the trees at mid-level having a tantrum
hopping from branch to branch, so they are very easy to spot, if you
use your phone you can call them in closer with a Gnatcatcher call.
They are very curious and will approach the sound of the call and
this can result in some good photos. I have also used an Eastern
Screech-owl call to draw in small birds by the picnic tables. During
the breeding season Chickadees, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned
Kinglets, Gnatcatchers, Wrens and other small birds will show up to
drive the forest assassin away. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are a handsome
bird with a lot of personality quirks which make them fun to watch.
—Dwight Thomas, Ph.D.

Recently, Jenk Jones, retired editor of the Tulsa Tribune and a
long-term Docent at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, handed me a book
and said, You need to read this.
The book was John Joseph
Mathews’ Talking to the Moon. I knew
something of Mathews’ story and knew that Talking to the Moon was his description of life
on the prairie. I had even visited his cabin in one of our Docent
field trips, led by Harvey Payne. I read the first chapter and then
read it again to be sure that I understood what he was saying. The
book was not easy to read. Every sentence contains gems of
information and wisdom, and Mathews’ masterful use of the
language made me want to know what this man saw and what he thought.
Many of those sentences raised more questions than they answered. My
pattern was to read awhile and then do some studying to try to get
more information, so that I could see the bigger picture that he was
portraying. The more I read, the more I wanted to find out what
happened next. Jenk suggested that I look back at some of Mark
Twain’s writing because Mathews’ conversations between
characters in the book are like Twain’s and just as good.
Well, I finally worked my way through the book. It was good that I
had an abundance of time. I needed it. I learned so much about the
prairie and the blackjack woodlands and so much about the people of
Osage County in the 1930’s.
With my inability to get to the prairie to make first-hand
observations this Spring, I decided to use Mathews’
observations as the basis for this Prairie
Watching article. I am not trying to improve on Mathews’
work, but I decided to sprinkle in some of my own observations and
photographs. The part of the book that I am using as the basis for
this article is Chapter V, Killing Little Flowers
Moon, which corresponds generally to the month of May.

In 1932, John Joseph Mathews built and lived in a small stone cabin
in a section of the Cross Timbers on the South edge of the current
Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Late in 2014, the Nature Conservancy was
able to complete the purchase of the Mathews property, including the
stone house, adding that land to the Preserve acreage. The Nature
Conservancy plans to clean up the area and renovate the cabin.
Mathews was an Osage, and after having been highly educated and
having lived in various places around the world, he moved back to his
Osage Headright home. He built the cabin, even personally collecting
the rock for construction from his own land, and then lived a simple
life in the Blackjacks and prairies for most of the remainder of his
life. During that time, he wrote a number of books. One of those
books is Talking to the Moon (University of
Oklahoma Press, 1945). This whole scenario, like Elizabeth Mathews
said in the Foreword, is the prairie version of Henry David
Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Here is a photograph of the cabin as it
looked in the Fall of 2013.
In Talking to the Moon, Mathews used the Osage names, translated to
English, for the months and described events in nature, and in his
life, that occurred around his cabin during each month. His
descriptions are so thorough and real that reading his book is like
hearing him tell you about it personally. It’s also like
bouncing along with him as he drove his station wagon across the
prairie, and like sweating with him as he crawled through the grass
to see some ducks up close.
Mathews explained that the Osage name Killing
Little Flowers Moon originated from the fact that the little
flowers
of early Spring died out at this time of the year and
were replaced with taller, larger wildflowers. This name is unusual
in that it isn’t based on some sharp event that begins with the
month, but is generally a time of change, a time of new beginnings.
Here is one of his statements:
These [little flowers] are the Johnny-jump-ups, spring beauties, and
hundreds of others that I cannot name…. The spring beauties cover
the blackjack ridges with their striped petals, and among them appear
little blue and yellow flowers.
Well, his statement about the little blue and yellow flowers
jumped out at me and held me captive for a while. What little blue
and yellow flowers did he see? From my prairie and Blackjack woodland
experience, I knew that the little blue and yellow flowers could have
been one or more of several plants that grow and bloom with the
Violets and Spring Beauties. Here are photographs of those two
little flowers
that he mentioned, first the Johnny-jump-ups,
the Prairie Violets, and second the Spring Beauties.

The blue wildflowers that he might have seen are likely Bluets,
Blue-eyed Grass, or Violet Wood Sorrell. They all bloom
contemporaneously with Spring Beauties and Violets. Based on what I
have seen on the prairie, I would speculate that the little blue
flowers were most likely Bluets. They are quite common when the
spring beauties are blooming, while the others are not as abundant or
at least not as noticeable. Here are my photographs of Bluets and
Violet Wood Sorrell taken at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve last
year.

Prairie Wood Sorrel, Fringed Puccoon, and Yellow-star Grass are
the first contemporaneously blooming yellow wildflowers to come to my
mind. All are relatively common, but the Prairie Wood Sorrell would
be the most abundant and would often be found growing in the midst of
the Spring Beauties and Violets. I think that this would be the most
likely one that Mathews saw. Of course, he might have seen all of
them and just lumped them together as little blue and yellow
flowers
. My photographs of Prairie Wood Sorrell and Fringed
Puccoon, each shown with Spring Beauties, are included below.

As the little flowers
pass away, they are replaced with others.
Mathews continued the statement above with:
…when the grass has covered the ridges in May, the weeds begin
to grow and flower; the tall, waving spiderworts, the black-eyed
susans…. The flowers of this moon are the tall flowers that wave
above the grass and not the earth-hugging little flowers.
Of course, he didn’t mention a hundred other very obvious tall Spring
wildflowers such as Blue False Wild Indigo that is so noticeable. And
with that, he was through with plants for this chapter. Here are my
Tallgrass Prairie Preserve photographs of a Prairie Spiderwort and a
Black-eyed Susan.

Mathews described several observations of animal interactions in Killing Little Flowers Moon. In fact, he
includes vignettes about or mentions twenty-four different native
species: 19 birds, 3 mammals, 1 reptile, and 1 insect. In his
observations, he specifically repeats that these animals live in a
balanced community. He points out that human intervention can upset
that balance quickly and change the interactions among the members of
the community.
Mathews’ observations about the events of the month are often
quite detailed and specific with lists; eight bird species are listed
as back from Winter migration. And he often connects the events of
the particular month to previous or future months:
The crows are quiet, and the bluejays are not so conspicuous as
usual. This is the moon of the songsters…. The birds that have
spent the winter away are back now…. During this moon the quail
begin to whistle and the prairie chickens can still be heard at
sunup.
The photographs below are a Bluebird and a Dickcissel, two of the
songsters he mentioned.

With this statement, we can infer that the Crows and Bluejays are
much noisier and noticeable in other months. We also know that even
though the Prairie Chickens’ booming was primarily earlier in
the year, it was still going on. He mentions Crows several times in
this Chapter. One interesting Crow story is that, as he watched a
Blacksnake attacking a Crested Flycatcher’s nest that had many
birds aroused and screeching, the Crows gathered around, not in
alarm, to watch the event as they conversed with each other calmly.
He even compares the Crows and the Blacksnake as two of a kind.
Following up on the Blacksnake, Mathews describes how his efforts to
make bird boxes for several hole-dwelling birds to use helped the
Blacksnake find and raid those nests. He found that he was forced to
interfere, shooting the Blacksnakes as they climbed the trees before
they could get to the nests.
He has a number of stories of his interactions with the native
animals. One involved Skunks. He had a pen of special chickens and
had made his pen almost impenetrable with wire around, above, and
below. However, a Skunk visited regularly and occasionally took a
chicken. One night, he found that the Skunk had almost
ritualistically killed all the chickens, taking only their heads. The
Skunk then made a fatal error in falling asleep in the pen. Here
Mathews became philosophical in musing that even among animals,
there are those who take only what they need, and there are killers.

Mathews was especially fond of watching Coyotes. He marveled at
their intelligence and cunning. For example, the Coyote prepared a
den under a limestone ledge where it was generally inaccessible to
any enemies of the young coyotes. The Coyote would take a different
route to the den each time she approached so as not leave a trail
leading to the den and to ensure that she wasn’t being followed
by a predator of her young. He also said that during the whelping
season, his chickens were safe from the Coyotes because the coyote
provided native food for its young, presumably to teach the young
what is proper food from the prairie. He described an experiment in
which, he placed a chicken where the Coyote could not help but see it
and could catch it easily. The Coyote arrived with a Mole in its
mouth and proceeded to ignore the chicken altogether. But when the
young were older, his chickens were fair game. Here is a recent
photograph of a Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Coyote, taken just before
he disappeared, leaving me with a poor photograph and a sea of grass.
Well, Mathews told stories about Ducks, Crickets, Hawks, and about
everything else that he saw from day to day. He talked about how the
Dickcissel sings incessantly from a stalk in the prairie, as you can
see in the photograph above, and he talked about strange sounds in
the night. There are even weather reports. This month was often too
hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, and funnel clouds could appear
suddenly and destroy.
He ended the chapter with a lengthy, colorful, discussion of the local
ranchers helping each other work
the cattle. Remember in the
1930s, there were no Bison on the prairie. This was ranch country.
As Jenk said, You need to read it
.