Big Virginia Lake, 9,800 feet above sea level

Eastern Sierra Nevada: A Landscape Beautiful Enough to Distract You from the Birds

As a parent, sometimes you have to drive nearly 6 hours one way to help your kid move out of an apartment, and store their stuff for 3 weeks until a new lease starts. It’s what you do to make life easier for someone else. As a birder, this is less a chore and more of an exciting opportunity. Ahead of time, you plot a route north that goes through the Owens Valley and along the Eastern Sierra Nevada. You find campsites in the mountains near Mammoth Lakes. And you scope out hikes along Tioga Pass in the high country of Yosemite National Park.

So it was that I was recently driving north along US-395. On one side of me was the lowest elevation point in the Lower 48 states (Badwater Basin in Death Valley, almost 300 feet below sea level). On the other the highest point in the Lower 48 (Mt. Whitney, 14,505 feet above sea level). On my first night, I was headed for a BLM campground near Crowley Lake. It required no reservations, seemed unlikely to be full, and was a spot I figured I could make by sunset. On the way up, a short-cut behind the town of Bishop produced a fly-by Black-billed Magpie, a first sighting in California for me.

Crowley Lake campground, looking west to the Sierra Nevada

When I pulled in to the campground at 7:30pm, there were plenty of treeless spots surrounded by sagebrush to choose from. The view was vast. I set up my tent, and started scanning the skies for Common Nighthawk, another species I’d never seen before in California. Just before the sun set, a floppy nighthawk flew over the highway in the distance. It wasn’t the only one in the skies. For the next couple of hours, I could hear their nasal “peent” sounds as they fed on insects in the air.

The tell-tale white wing stripe of the nighthawk

l was up early the next morning, headed first to Old Mammoth Rd. to look for Pine Grosbeaks. I saw them once near Rochester, but this would have been a third new California bird for me. The spot was full of good montane species like Dusky Flycatcher, Red Crossbill, MacGillivray’s Warbler, and Clark’s Nutcrackers. But I never saw a Pine Grosbeak. I moved on to the Mammoth Scenic Loop, exploring a somewhat recent burn area hoping for Black-backed Woodpeckers. This would be a world lifer for me. But again I struck out. White-headed Woodpeckers were a nice consolation. And knowledge that the spot appeared to offer free camping.

There was one more potential California lifer for me in the immediate area. At Mono Lake Cemetery, there had been sporadic reports of Pinyon Jays in the last month. Since it was just a couple of miles off the highway, I figured it was worth a stop. Within minutes of arriving, I heard the familiar nasal honking of these birds.

A backlit silhouette of the gray-blue Pinyon Jay

At noon, it was time to head further north toward toward a target for the trip. Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches are crazy high elevation birds. Indeed, they may breed at a higher altitude than any other North American bird.  How these little birds survive the elements is a mystery to me. They’re the most abundant and widespread of the three rosy-finch species. That said, they’re not easy to find. They simply live in locations that are too high, and too remote. The best bet to find them is summer, when it’s tolerable to be at 10,000 feet. There is one reliable spot to find them in California that doesn’t require oxygen canisters, alpine hiking, and luck.

At a place called Virginia Lakes Resort, a single birdseed feeder has been attracting Gray-crowned Rosy-finches from nearby rocky slopes for years. To my delight, it was doing so on the day I drove up. After a short wait of 15-20 minutes, a beautiful rosy-finch flew up and fed off the ground. That combo of black, gray, brown, and pink is unusual and intruiging. I felt a bit dirty getting a lifer at a birdfeeder. I guess it’s better than an armchair tick.

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch
High-altitude specialist

I camped for the night at first-come Lundy Canyon campground, which happily had a few spots to choose from when I pulled in. A Sooty Grouse had also been reported there within the last week, a bird species I’ve never seen. The likelihood seemed low, but camping there at least gave me a chance. I didn’t see or hear one, but some deer passed by my campsite at dawn.

Yosemite National Park

My last solo adventure for the trip before driving west to Berkeley was a half-day in Yosemite National Park. The only other time I had been to Yosemite was as a months-old infant, when (according to my parents) I nearly froze to death. With temperatures climbing into the 80s on this July day, there wasn’t a chance of that. Despite all the media attention to the crowds and traffic jams at Yosemite this summer, I didn’t anticipate any of that mess. That’s because instead of entering from the west and heading to the Yosemite Valley with all the yokels and dirtbags, I was entering from the east and taking the high road. When I pulled up to the Tioga Pass entrance on Highway 120, and bought my disgusting National Parks pass, there wasn’t a single car in line. 

Another pathetic and gross display from a sad, self-centered man-child

I had conflicting goals on this day. Part of me wanted to find picturesque spots and just sit down and soak it in. They abound in Yosemite. Touloumne Meadows looks almost like a CGI setting of outdoor beauty. Olmsted Point offers a jaw-dropping view of Half Dome. Any number of pullouts along the way are spectacular. Another part of me wanted to hike. Cathedral Lakes, for one, looks like an great adventure. And, of course, I wanted to look for birds. 

I chose birds. My first target was Black-backed Woodpecker. These uncommon birds like recently burned areas. The area around Lukens Lake burned in the Blue Jay fire in 2020. And Black-backed Woodpeckers were being seen on the short and easy hike to the lake. The hike is full of burned, needle-less pine tree trunks. I proceeded slowly, keeping my eyes out for movement. There were Dark-eyed Juncos and Chipping Sparrows and Hairy Woodpeckers, but not what I was looking for. When I reached the lake, my luck turned. A pair of Black-backed Woodpecker were working a pine tree in their distinctive, bark-flaking fashion. The males have a yellow forehead, while the females caps are all black. They gave me a good show for a couple of minutes.

Male (with yellow forehead) and female pair of Black-backed Woodpeckers

With a second lifer for the trip secured relatively quickly, I decided to take a hike in hopes of finding a trio of American Goshawks. A successful nest, and juveniles, were somewhere along the Ten Lakes Trail. The trailhead was just a short drive from Lukens Lake. I didn’t know exactly where the goshawks were, and there’s no cell reception in the area to look it up. But eBird reports I saw talked of signs in the area of the nest (goshawks are very vocal and territorial around nests, known to dive bomb humans who get too close). And I trusted my birding mojo.

The hike turned out to be more work than I wanted. It starts at 7,500 feet elevation, and steadily climbs from there. Many spots were exposed, and it was hot. The goshawks were about 2 miles in. When I arrived at the general area, there were no signs. But I was in the right spot. After 10 minutes, I heard the “keee-yah” call repeated. A minute later, there were 2 goshawks calling back-and-forth to each other. I saw one fly through the forest across the trail. But I never saw any of them perched. This was my 6th new bird species for California, inching me closer to 500 species for the state.

The Eastern Sierra Nevada is an incredible place of mind-melting beautiful scenery and good birding. I can’t wait to get back.