On the morning of March 23, while conducting a bird survey for the air force on Edwards Air Force Base, I encountered a gnatcatcher. I heard it first, delivering a buzzy “zeee” call, within the range of what I had heard Blue-gray Gnatcatchers produce. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were around, so I thought not much of it, though “pished” it in anyway since it was nearly the first bird I found that day, and I’ve had Black-tailed Gnatcatcher on my radar since I began doing these surveys. When it came in, I noticed the mostly black tail, though I convinced myself that perhaps it was worn and missing its white outer tail feathers. It also continued only making the “zeee” call and no others that would be more typical of Black-tailed. It was interesting nonetheless and I took lots of pictures figuring that I’d get a closer look on my camera or computer after my surveying work.

Then I completely forgot about it. Other stuff was on my mind, I did a long survey, worked a full day the next day, and never went back to review my photos. Today I finally got around to it, and confirmed my suspicions that this was indeed a Black-tailed Gnatcatcher. Holy shit. In 2009 I had found the first record of Black-tailed Gnatcatcher for Kern County in the Antelope Valley west-southwest of Mojave. In 2011, another one was found west of Rosamond, about 10km from the first site. Before that, the only previous record for the Antelope Valley was of a specimen from 1938 from “Fairmont” in the southwestern Antelope Valley of Los Angeles County. Now Black-tailed Gnatcatcher comes back to LA.

Where did this thing come from? The mesquite woodlands on Edwards Air Force Base seemed like a natural spot for Black-tailed Gnatcatchers. It’s what they like further east, and these mesquites get things like Lucy’s Warblers in the spring, so why not? But in three consecutive years of intense surveys I’ve not had one. The northwest Antelope Valley sites are 40-45km away, and the next nearest site (from eBird) was one in the Mojave Narrows in 1990 - that’s 65km away to the east. They pick up more regularly in Barstow and their core range is further east. This isn’t a bird known for its wandering or vagrancy. Could this thing have come from one of those spots? Or is there some other population that we haven’t found yet from which this bird wandered? The air force base is huge and largely inaccessible, and the east Antelope Valley itself is rarely birded away from a few regular spots. So maybe another population is out there somewhere waiting for a birding discovery.