gnatcatcher (redirected from Polioptilidae)

gnatcatcher

Blue-gray gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea)

(credit: Karl H. Maslowski)

Any of about 11 species of small songbirds (genus Polioptila) often treated as a subfamily of the Old World warbler family Sylviidae. The blue-gray gnatcatcher, 4.5 in. (11 cm) long, with its long white-edged tail, looks like a tiny mockingbird. It breeds locally from eastern Canada and California to the Bahamas and Guatemala and winters from the southern U.S. southward. The black-tailed gnatcatcher lives in the deserts of the southwestern U.S.; the other species are found in Central and South America and Cuba.