Birding Calaveras County - Pt. 3 of our birding trip

May 19, 2007 on 7:05 pm | In Birding Afar Report | 1 Comment

April 27, 2007
Angel’s Camp, California

Well, it’s taken me almost a month to post this third part of our birding trip. Here it is May, and we’ve done so much birding in the past few weeks that my memories might reasonably be less clear of the 3rd and final day of our exploration of Calaveras County, but such is not the case. The first two days of our trip treated us to one wonder after another. Maybe it would have been too good to be true to get yet another fantastic day.

To tell the truth, this last day was a bit of a disappointment. It was so very muggy and hot and if there’s one type of weather I really hate, that’s exactly what it is. We’re coastal people, and though we do get our muggy days in the valleys by the sea, they can’t quite compare to the close, stale feeling of a muggy day further inland. Nevertheless, we did manage to add two new birds to our lifelist, so it’s worth blogging about!

Taking our cues from the only document we could turn up on birding Calaveras County, we decided to head south from Angel’s Camp to the tiny town of Copperopolis. I love that name, and I must report, the soil in this place is actually copper colored. Really neat. The document suggested we head north-west from Copperopolis on Rock Creek Rd. to the Salt Springs Reservoir. The heat, the lack of road signs and the fact that Salt Springs Reservoir, at the end of a long road, turned out to look rather like a hole in the ground with virtually no trees around it and would have cost $15 to get into didn’t win our birding seal of approval. However, if you want to add the Western Kingbird and the Tri-colored Blackbird to your lifelist, Rock Springs Road is the place to go.

The Western Kingbird, Tyrannus verticalis was one of the birds on our wishlist for this area, and he obliged us by immediately appearing as soon as we entered the pastureland on this road, with it’s golden weedy field and old wire fences. We were thrilled, pulled over and hopped out of the car for a better look. The smoke blue/grey head and pale yellow belly of this wild bird look powdery soft. You’d like to touch him, but the birds we saw were fairly shy. Notice his unique, stubby little bill and his large, pretty eye. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Western Kingbird are the pencil-thin white lines along the outer edges of the tail, particularly visible in flight.

With his delicate hues and unusual form of body, you can imagine this bird being at home in South America during the winter. In the summer, the Western Kingbird is present throughout all of California except…and this is why seeing him was so great…along the coastline. Western Kingbirds are sometimes reported in these areas because they are migrating through, but for Sonoma County residents, your best chance is to head east to check this bird off your list.

There must have been at least several hundred of these birds along the fences in this area, and we got to hear their interesting pidik pik pidik peekado calls. It was a real privilege to finally see one for ourselves, and though they may be a daily sight to locals, to us, they were simply lovely.

Reason #2 to check out Rock Springs Rd. is the Tri-colored Blackbird. He is of about the same size as the kingbird (an average of about 8 3/4″ from beak to tail), and if you weren’t keeping a sharp lookout, you might drive by these birds on the assumption that you are seeing the common Red-winged Blackbird, but to me, the two birds were different enough that I shouted for my husband to halt the car again for a good look.

Both kinds of blackbirds are listed as being year-round residents of both western and central California. It’s likely all of us have seen them many times. But on this trip, my eyes were so attuned to anything with wings that a group of Tri-colored blackbirds we saw really confirmed the differences for us. You have to look at the wing patch, and here is where people get confused.

On the common Red-winged Blackbird, you will see a stripe of vivid scarlet, and under it, a slimmer stripe of vibrant yellow. Yes, I know that makes this bird tri-colored, but sometimes ornithologists don’t seem to have the sense they should. Now, on the Tri-colored blackbird, you will see a small patch of dusty, muddy red with a wider stripe below it of pale yellow or cream. That’s the big difference. The color of the Red-wing’s wing badges is extremely bold. The Tri-color’s badges are duller and, to me, have a somewhat blurry appearance. I should note here that we do have one other kind of blackbird - the Bi-colored who lacks the yellow/cream stripe on his wings.

The Tri-colored Blackbird, Agelaius tricolor is a bird that out-of-state birders come all the way to California to see. We are extremely lucky to live where they do, and if you are in the Calaveras County region, head over to the Copperopolis, Rock Springs Rd. area for a very good chance to view this bird for yourself.

These were the highlights of the day for us. After this, we headed south of Copperopolis to the Tulloch Reservoir where, frankly, the only good thing we saw was an Osprey nesting on a telephone pole. I’m betting that natives have secret paths to get down to this incredibly large lake that could yield some decent birding. My huge dream was to see a Phainopepla which is listed as being there, but when we got to the North Shore, the only access to the lake appeared to be through a motel with a boat dock. We then wended our way on what seemed like an endless road to the South Shore, and the lake here looked kind of bleak…a place for people with loud boats, not quiet birders with binoculars. Again, this was a fee-charging recreation center, and not the natural environment we’d hoped for.

You have your stunning days and your blah days in birding. That’s just how it goes. We added 6 new birds to our lifelist in a 3 day trip…something to be incredibly excited about. This exploration also taught me something I want to pass on to Sonoma County birders. If you are planning a birding trip to the Calaveras County area, you are likely to have the best experience by sticking to the forests and the high country. I think the lakes and open places we have here at home are, in a word, better than what you’ll find in Calaveras. But what they do have there that we don’t have here are the high mountains and the sequoia forest that makes for breath-taking, heart-thumping birding.

Big Trees State Park and the portion of Hwy 4 between the park and Bear Valley is one of the most uplifting, aweing stretches of road in California. We can recommend it to you with all our hearts!

Read Part 1 of our Calaveras County Birding Exploration
Read Part 2 of our Calaveras County Birding Exploration.

Birds of Arnold, Bear Valley, California - Pt. 2 of our Birding Trip

April 30, 2007 on 6:09 pm | In Birding Afar Report | 2 Comments

April 26, 2007
Angel’s Camp, CA.

The call of Hwy 4 proved too strong to ignore, so we again made our way northeast from Angel’s Camp to this enchanted road with its rich birding habitats. Our first stop: White Pines Lake and Community Park. This interesting little place is located just a mile or so to the north of the town of Arnold. Willows, oaks, and evergreens encircle the lake which is, for Sonoma County locals, a bit larger in size than, say, Lake Ralphine in Howarth Park. There are picnic tables and a good path here. I don’t know how populous this park gets on weekends, but our mid-week visit showed us a quiet, peaceful place with only a few fishermen out on the water.

Today was lovely and sunny, reaching about 75 degrees by mid-afternoon, and something made us feel that the willowy habitat might yield some exciting birds. Bullock’s Northern Oriole was the first super sighting. A really vibrant male was perched in a willow just beside the water. This was our first oriole of the year, and it’s funny that we’ve been so eagerly waiting to see one at home so I could post a bird alert about the orioles having arrived, but here we’ve gone and seen the bird at the other side of California! Never fear, I’m sure the orioles must have reached Sonoma County by now, and I will definitely be posting a complete post about them once we have a sighting at home.

While I was honing in on this fiery bird with my binoculars, my husband kept trying to draw my attention to a second bird he was seeing a few trees over. His description made me think it must be the female oriole, but I couldn’t manage to see it with my own eyes, and bird sightings don’t count unless we can confirm what one another are seeing. There were abundant Red-winged and Brewer’s Blackbirds here. In point of fact, I’d say all of Calaveras County is peppered with these two species in really remarkable abundance. They appear to be everywhere we go and their songs fill the air from before dawn until sunset. Mallard ducks were out on the lake and also waddling in a small stream that runs parallel to the lake path near the parking lot.

We saw an unidentified sparrow much to our chagrin, but few birds can be harder to confirm than stripey brown sparrows flitting for a brief second through dense foliage. We sat down for lunch when we were hungry. As with yesterday, we were joined by Brewer’s Blackbirds and a pair of Stellar’s Jays, but these birds are not as used to people as the birds in Big Trees State Park.

I had just gotten a few bites deep into a pasta salad when a call from the willows made me drop my fork like a hot potato. Sweet sweet sweet little more sweeeet This unusual snippet of birdsong rang a bell in my mind, and as we abandoned our picnic to locate the source of the song, I managed to get my memories in order. I knew that a warbler makes that call, but I couldn’t remember which one. The bird calls we’ve listened to over and over again on the DVD published by John Feith - Birds, Birds, Birds - was what was coming to my mind as I tried to collect my thoughts. And then we saw him. There in the brush, more yellow than your symbolic idea of a canary, and with the faint striping on his breast was the Yellow Warbler!

We’ve been waiting for this moment for so long, and I wish it could have lasted for hours, but I’m afraid we flushed the stunning little bird and we didn’t get a second chance to admire him. The Yellow Warbler, Dendroica petechia is the only overall yellow warbler in North America. Though this bird puts in appearances through most of the United States in the warm season of the year, we had never been lucky enough, to date, to see him in Sonoma County. Now we can say, with relish, that he is an unforgettable, unique bird. It is such a thrill to add him to our lifelist, and this sighting will always earmark White Pines Lake as a special place for us.

Continuing to wend our way up Hwy 4, we couldn’t help stopping in again at Big Trees State Park. Today’s visit just goes to show how much luck is involved in birding. Yesterday, the forest was a tapestry of tree clinging birds. Today, our only sighting was a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers, high up in the evergreens. We could hear Red-breasted Nuthatches in the distance, and the charming Chickarees were everywhere, but the woods were like a completely different place today. Where were all the birds? Resting? Called away on business in another part of the forest? Who can say? We only stayed for a short time, before getting in our car again and continuing northeast on Hwy 4.

Unfortunately, Calaveras County birding simply isn’t documented as well as it could be. We were only able to find two websites on the subject, each containing a couple of pages of general information, but this was enough to go on to let us know we might be in for some treats if we headed up toward Bear Valley. Just past Vista Point, with its awesome view of the snow-capped Sierras, the sight of some finches (unidentified) clustered on a rocky place at the roadside was enough to make us stop the car again to see what we could see. Good idea.

Mountain Chickadees were such a welcome sight here. We first identified this species in 2006 in Yosemite, and it was awfully nice to see them again. In Sonoma County, we have the Chestnut-backed Chickadee, and these also live in Calaveras County, but the Mountain Chickadee loves altitude and you won’t see him back home. Two unique features set him apart from the Chestnut-backed Chickadee. The back is a soft grey, not russet, and he has a white eyebrow that is completely unique in the North American Chickadee kingdom. The Mountain Chickadee, Poecile gambeli, is listed as being about half an inch larger than the 4 3/4″ Chestnut-backed in my Sibley Guide. I don’t know if I can agree. The chestnuts are constant visitors at my feeders at home, and they strike me as the larger and leaner of the two birds. I could be wrong about this, but feel its worth it to mention this observation.

White-headed Woodpeckers and Hairy Woodpeckers were diving amongst the conifers, but we had moment of birding agony in this little roadside spot. We saw a bird that I believe was Williamson’s Sapsucker. A good-sized woodpecker-like bird gave us a breathtaking glimpse of his yellow belly, and I believe his head and back were predominantly black, but we just can’t be sure. The bird could potentially have been a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker or the very similar Red-naped Sapsucker. We just didn’t see the bird’s head well enough and, because of this, couldn’t make a positive identification. Nothing drives us as crazy as moments like this, seeing a bird we’ll almost certainly never see at home, but not getting a clear enough view of it to register its wonderful name on our lifelist. I can only say about this…GRRRR! I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering who that bird was.

Audubon’s Yellow-rumped Warblers were catching insects by skimming just inches above the road. We’d never seen them do this before. A chipmunk darted out from under a bush for a moment, was completely startled to see us, and hurried back under cover. From somewhere lower in the valley, the continuo of Red-breasted Nuthatch song played on. I could gladly have spent several hours in this spot which seemed so rich in bird life, but the sun was starting to sink and we wanted to make it to Bear Valley before it got much later.

Bear Valley is a skiing resort, and even now at the end of April, the snow was lying pretty thick everywhere but on the surface of the road. Two huge wooden bears guard the entrance to the lodge on the lefthand side, and on the right, there was a very large white meadow and a mirror-like lake with Canada Geese floating on it. Brewer’s Blackbirds, Red-winged Blackbirds and American Robins seemed to be having no problems with the snow or the 7000+ ft. altitude, but other than this, Bear Valley was a little like a ghost town because the skiing season has ended.

We felt a million miles away from everything up there, a little lightheaded from the thin atmosphere, and amazed to be standing in the midst of so much snow without feeling even remotely compelled to put on coats. The warm, glistening surroundings were simply beautiful. We would have liked to have continued on the road to Lake Alpine, to get to know the birds of Alpine County, but there were warnings about a pass being closed, and though our little compact car has done just fine up to this point of our exploration, we have no illusions about the fact that we are not piloting a 4 wheeler. Coming back down the highway, into the setting sun, a beautiful, golden-red coyote gazed out at us from the shadow of the pines. Bats flitted across our horizon and our heads began to clear a little as we came back down to our customary altitude. One new bird for our lifelist, and another unforgettable day for us here in Calaveras County.

Go to Part 3 of our Calaveras County Birding Trip Report

Birding Calaveras County, California - Big Trees State Park

April 30, 2007 on 12:16 am | In Birding Afar Report | 2 Comments

April 25, 2007
Angel’s Camp, California

I’m writing this blog post from the resort where we’re staying in Calaveras County, all the way across the state of California from our beloved Sonoma County. This is one of the rare, priceless opportunities we have once in a great while to go on a little exploration, birding farther afield, and our first day here has proven to be one of the greatest events in our birding career.

Today’s destination: Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

We had a funny combination of weather conditions this morning, with snow left on the ground at the sides of the road from last weekend, but a warm, sunny sky overhead. As you head east along Hwy. 4 through the towns of Murphys and Arnold, the conifers get thicker and thicker. The air smells incredibly good, and just a couple of miles past Arnold, you arrive at the main entrance to the state park. We headed first to the North Grove near the visitor center and you quickly understand why this place is the pride of the county and a major tourist destination. In addition to the ponderosa pines, sugar pines, incense cedars and white fir, the giant sequoias reach heights of up to 325 ft. and can be up to 33 ft. in diameter. There is something so special about this forest.

It has a completely different feeling than the coast redwood forests we know in Sonoma County. The whole atmosphere seems brighter, airier, more open and ventilated here in Big Trees, and appropriately, the first inhabitant of the woodland you meet is the creature John Muir credited as the cause of the forest - the Douglas Squirrel.

I have to say, with the possible exception of the Alpine Chipmunk, you will never meet a more darling furry animal than the Douglas Squirrel, also called the Chickaree. John Muir did an excellent and entertaining study of them over a century ago and explained how the pinecone-storing seed-scattering habits of the Chickaree have conjured up and maintained the vast forest of the Sierras. He is both far smaller and quicker than the familiar California Grey Squirrel we know at home and he ricochets from trunk to trunk in the forest like a pinball. The forest floor can suddenly come alive with half a dozen of them, speeding over the ground and suddenly stopping to make their bird-like trills, their little dog-like barks and a host of other unexpected sounds. They play lead in the musical arrangement of Big Trees.

We were a little disgruntled that our arrival in the woods corresponded with some park rangers cutting down one of the trees. The ugly sound of chainsaws hardly created a feeling of repose, and my husband and I nearly jumped out of our shoes when the tree hit the ground, shaking the entire forest with a boom that hurt my ears. I don’t know if the tree was sick, perhaps in danger of falling over, but I was sad about its demise. It is believed that some of the giant sequoias in the park are more than 2000 years old.

Eventually the rangers left, and the forest made that odd shift that forests do when loud people leave. It seemed to become quiet, but really, it’s more like a top level of distraction disappears so that all of the lower levels of sounds can begin to be heard.

We were incredibly hungry and began our picnic at one of the tables. In moments, I could see we were being watched, and a falling potato chip brought in a Stellar’s Jay…then 2…then a dozen or more. They were gorgeous-looking individuals with deep blue coloring and very clear blue stripes on their foreheads. I have never seen such strong markings on the Stellar’s Jays at home. They were accompanied by a brave and noisy group of Brewer’s Blackbirds. Big Trees is a beautifully clean, litter-free place. Now I know the compliments for this should go to the jays and blackbirds…not the forest rangers!

We were having a pretty jolly time with these guests perching everywhere except inside our cooler when a flash of approaching movement caught our eyes. A pair of birds had swooped into range, disappearing somewhere in the treetops.

“It’s…it’s the White-headed Woodpecker”, I gasped under my breath, hardly able to believe it.

I will now publicly call my husband to task for doubting my word and suggesting it was probably tried-and-true Acorn Woodpeckers.

“No,” I was adamant, and we leapt up in the middle of our picnic and stole as soundlessly as we could toward where I felt the birds had landed.

In just seconds, we found ourselves face to face with a bird we didn’t know whether we would ever get to see. You could have knocked us over with a White-headed Woodpecker feather!

That snow-white head, accented with red toward the back, the black body with a streak of white on the shoulder, and the smart black eyes fixed on us. 15 yards away, his wife had found her own tree, but first we just stood by the male, scarcely able to believe this dream was coming true for us.

My husband wants me to make sure to take the Audubon Society publicly to task as well here, because the western bird guide clearly states that this is an uncommon bird that is difficult to see because it is so silent. No so! It may be that the writer of that entry observed these birds at a different time of year or in a habitat where humans aren’t quite so common, but not only did these birds continue to appear everywhere we walked today in the park, in plain view, they flew within inches of our faces and made quite a lot of noise. Squeak-a-squeak-a-squeak-a-squeak mated pairs greeted each other after foraging separately, fanning out their wings as they would alight on the same trunk. They seemed so joyous! And we also heard the staccato bud-up call that sounds identical to the very beginning of Nuttall’s Woodpecker’s bud-up…budda-budda-budda-budda.

The White-headed Woodpecker, Picoides albolarvatus, measures some 9″-10″ from tip to tail and is a year-round resident of Calaveras County. The female lacks the red cap of the male, and the birds excavate a nesting hole in a pine where they lay 3-5 white eggs. Their facial markings call to my mind the White-breasted Nuthatch, with that striking division of black and white.

It was, simply put, a defining moment in our lives as birders to spend the afternoon in the presence of these unique woodpeckers, rare or not. They do not live in our own neck of the woods, and if you ever possibly can manage it, a visit to their home in Big Trees State Park will be well worth the effort. I am including here our absolutely pitiful photo of the White-headed Woodpecker as a record of our sighting. One day, we will own a real, zooming, digital camera that is meant for photographing birds. If any generous-minded benefactors are reading this and have a spare in their arsenal, we’d love receiving a donation of such a camera, to better document our birding explorations. Until then, it’s photos that look like we’re trying to pull off a woodpecker hoax, and my trusty paintbrush and palette.

You’d think adding this one, new, magnificent bird to our lifelist would be more than enough of a thrill for a single day. Yet, just down the path from where we first saw the White-headed Woodpecker, we came upon a wonderful pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches. I was so excited about this, as it is the White-breasted Nuthatch which seems much more common at home. I have to say, I don’t think the photo in my Audubon guide quite captures the charm of the Red-breasted Nuthatch, and even the talented David Allen Sibley falls a little short somehow. The living bird has such a bright spirit, such an active nature and we so enjoyed watching this pair scaling the trunk of a tree, picking at the bark, making industrious little pik remarks to one another as they worked. And, all day long, we heard the more prominent, monotonous mah mah mah mah mah of this species drifting through the woods.

It’s interesting to mention here that this is the bird whose call skeptics have suggested that searchers are mistaking for that of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. I agree that there is a similar nasal quality in the sound I listened to all day today, but the individual notes and the overall pattern of notes are nothing like the recordings I’ve heard of Ivory-bills from the 1930’s.

The Red-breasted Nuthatch Sitta canadensis measures some 4 1/2″ in total and is a year-round resident of both Calaveras County and Sonoma County. They lay 4-6 brown-spotted eggs in an excavated tree cavity.

We were just absorbing the happiness of the active, sylvan nuthatches when we flushed
tree-clinging-bird #3 up from a fallen log on the ground. There was something about the glimpse we got as the bird took off that made us feel it wasn’t anyone we knew. After just a moment of searching, we relocated it perched above us on a tree trunk, but our brains were kind of scrambling at this point because of the overload of amazing woodpeckers. Then we saw the back, and that big, fluffy white spot and we knew we were at last looking at the Hairy Woodpecker with our own eyes.

We have often worried about how we would distinguish the Downy Woodpecker from the Hairy Woodpecker. Most bird guides depict two, nearly-identical looking birds with those distinct marshmallow-like spots on their backs and leave you to base identification between the two birds on size alone.

We’ve become very good friends with Downy Woodpeckers in our neighborhood over the past year or so, and because the are so tiny (only about 6″-7″) we became confident in identifying them as Downy and not Hairy, despite the confusing resemblance.

Well, our doubts about our identification skills really were allayed today as we spent time with a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers in Big Trees State Park. For one thing, their red crests were not at all red. I really want to research this better, because the birds we saw had peachy-coral crests of a most unusual tone. Were they young birds? We don’t know, but this was such a distinctive feature. They also simply looked ‘bigger’ in every way than our friends the Downy Woodpeckers. They were comparable in size to the 9″-10″ range of the White-headed Woodpeckers we saw…perhaps just a little bit bigger, in fact, and we watched with awe as one of them took an enormous piece of bark off a tree and let it fall.

Like the White-headed Woodpeckers, this mated pair greeted each other with a burst of loud, rapid notes. Like most woodpeckers, they nest in excavated holes and lay 3-5 white eggs. The Hairy Woodpecker, Picoides villosus lives both here and at home in Sonoma County year round, but this was our first ever sighting of one and only made our day all the more incredible.

In addition to the above birds, I saw the biggest, most robust looking Brown Creeper I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if our Pacific coast birds are by nature smaller or more, well, sleepy-looking, but the bird I saw today looked so alert, well-plumed and busy. His feathers were lovely, with a very visible rusty tinge around the base of the tail. I must devote a full post to this unique little bird one day, and I was very glad to see he has a place in what had come to seem like Woodpecker heaven to us.

Not surprisingly, Audubon’s Yellow-Rumped Warblers were on hand. They love to follow woodpeckers around to glean from their excavated leavings as we learned this winter by observing their interaction with our resident Red-breasted Sapsucker. There were also numerous American Robins in the forest.

It was hard to leave the North Grove, and I confess, we were almost in a state of listlessness after spending hours swimming in a sea of tree-clinging birds, but we eventually got back in the car and headed up the Beaver Creek trail toward the South Grove.

The forest was further brightened by the big green and white blossoms of Pacific Dogwoods - a lovely sight. This road crosses the Stanislaus River and we got out for a look at the rushing, loud water. Over the din came the sound that Sibley so accurately describes as a cascading series of clear whistles, falling and slowing, ending with nasal hissing notes. Thanks to my birding binoculars, I found myself catching sight of the Canyon Wren, down on the rocky bank below the bridge. I love wrens, but never dared to dream I’d be lucky enough to see this one. They do not live in Sonoma County, but are year-round residents here and their beautiful white throat, grey head and speckled russet body are unmistakable. I wish we’d had a longer look before the bird flew away under the bridge, but I was really thrilled by even a brief glimpse.

The Canyon Wren Catherpes mexicanus measures about 5 3/4″ and has a very long bill. They are considered an uncommon bird and their preferred habitat is sheer cliffs and rocky places, often near water. They build their small nests in the crevices of rocks and lay 4-6 white eggs.

We also spotted a Hermit Thrush making a bird bath of an indentation in a rock by the river, and two amusing ground squirrels having a tremendous battle. We continued on up the road to see the scenic overlook where snow is still cresting the distant Sierras. This looked like excellent habitat for raptors, but we didn’t see anything. It was so quiet up there on the mountain, apart from the eternal call of a Red-breasted Nuthatch counting off the alpine seconds from the branches of an evergreen.

I am falling asleep as I write this. I’ve gotten more oxygen and exercise in one day here than I normally do in a week back home, and I can hardly imagine what we’ll see tomorrow. In my heart, I have a little list of special birds I would love to see in this unique corner of California, but I won’t write them down due to some sense of superstition. If the birds want me to see them, they will let me know.

Read Part 2 of our Calaveras County Bird Trip Report.