Birding Calaveras County - Pt. 3 of our birding trip

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.