Basin wiki · Animals
Phainopepla
Phainopepla nitens
A crested black songbird tied to desert mistletoe. Here for the cool months, often gone by deep summer.
Where you'll see it
Phainopeplas follow desert mistletoe, which grows on catclaw, mesquite, and other wash trees, and sometimes in Joshua tree woodland. Washes with smoke trees and desert willows, and the park’s wash edges, are the places to look from fall through spring. The park notes that many of its birds are seasonal and that a lot of “desert” birds are moving; this species is a clear example. By midsummer many have shifted to oak and riparian habitat off the hottest flats.
How to tell it
Males are glossy black with a ragged crest and a red eye. A white wing patch flashes in flight. Females are gray with the same crest and a paler wing patch. The call is a soft, rising whistle, easy to miss until you hear it from the top of a wash tree. A raven is several times the size. A black bird with a long tail and no crest, sitting on a fence, is more likely a phoebe or a starling in town.
Mistletoe is the pantry
They eat mistletoe berries and spread the sticky seeds. They also take insects, sometimes caught in flight the way a flycatcher would. Stripping mistletoe out of every catclaw because it looks like a parasite removes the reason the bird is on the lot. Desert mistletoe on native trees is ordinary Mojave ecology. Mistletoe in a prized nursery mesquite is a pruning decision; mistletoe in a wild wash is the food web.
Windows and cats
They perch in the open and will hit a reflective window that faces a wash planting. Decals or a screen on that one window do more than a general worry about “the crows.” Outdoor cats take them. If you want the bird, the conditions are a native wash tree, some mistletoe, and a cat indoors. Cornell’s species account is the ID backup when a photo is ambiguous.
