California condor

• 1. Introduction

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  On Easter Sunday in 1987, a bird tagged AC-9 was caught, and with it the last wild California condor disappeared from the sky. The person who caught it was Jan Hamber, an ornithologist who had spent years studying these birds. The capture was no accident of fieldwork. It was the final step in a deliberate plan to take an entire species out of the wild so that it would not be lost altogether.

  The California condor, Gymnogyps californianus, is the largest land bird in North America. A creature that size does not simply fade away unnoticed, yet it came very close. So how does such a bird live, and what does it eat? Why did people who loved it decide that locking up every last one was the only hope? And what happens to a wild animal when, for the first time in generations, it is released again?

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• 2. Built To Soar

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  Measure a California condor from wingtip to wingtip and you reach about 3.0 meters, the widest span of any bird in North America. Reports have claimed as much as 3.4 meters, but nothing beyond 3.05 meters has ever been verified. Body weight runs from 7 to 14.1 kilograms, with typical estimates between 8 and 9. Only the trumpeter swan and the introduced mute swan surpass it in both length and weight. Seen from far off, a condor is sometimes taken for a small airplane, and that mistake probably happens more often than confusing it with any other bird.

  The adult is a uniform black, except for large triangular bands of white on the underside of the wings. The bill is ivory, the legs and feet are gray, and the eyes are brownish red. A frill of black feathers circles the base of the neck. Young birds look different, mottled dark brown, with gray rather than white under the flight feathers. The head and neck are almost bare, which helps keep them clean when the bird feeds on carcasses. The skin there can flush noticeably with the bird's mood, shifting from yellowish to a glowing reddish-orange.

  Females are smaller than males, which is unusual among birds of prey. Most measurements come from captive birds, so scientists cannot be sure how much wild condors differ.

  The condor's big flight muscles are not anchored to a similarly large breastbone, so it cannot flap for long. It beats its wings to lift off the ground, then glides, sometimes for miles without a single stroke. Speeds of 90 kilometers an hour and altitudes of 4,600 meters have been recorded. Condors prefer high perches from which they can launch with little effort, and they are often seen riding thermals beside rock cliffs.

  The bird has no syrinx, the vocal organ of most birds, so its voice is limited to hisses and grunts that carry only a short distance. It also bathes often and may spend hours preening. On hot days it cools itself by defecating on its own legs, a habit known as urohidrosis. All that effortless gliding serves one daily purpose, a search for food across a vast range.

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• 3. Carrion And Competition

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  A wild condor may travel as far as 250 kilometers in a day in search of a carcass. It lives in rocky shrubland, coniferous forest and oak savanna, and it usually stays near cliffs or large trees that can hold a nest. Scientists think the species first evolved to feed on the bodies of Pleistocene megafauna, most of which are now gone from North America.

  Today the condor still favors large land mammals such as deer, goats, sheep, donkeys, horses, pigs, cougars, bears and cattle. It will also take rabbits, squirrels and coyotes, and it feeds on whales, California sea lions and salmon. Birds and reptiles are rarely on the menu. Fresh kills are preferred, though the condor will eat decayed meat when it has to.

  The condor cannot smell its food. Instead it watches for other scavengers, such as eagles and smaller vultures, that have found something. The smaller vultures cannot tear through thick hides the way a condor can, so they often need the larger bird to open a carcass. Condors can usually drive other scavengers away. Bears simply ignore them, and golden eagles will fight a condor for the meat.

  Condors are intermittent eaters. In the wild they may go from a few days to two weeks between meals, then gorge on 1 to 1.5 kilograms at one sitting. Within large groups there is a clear pecking order, settled through body language, playful contests and a range of hisses and grunts. At a carcass the dominant birds eat before the younger ones. Golden eagles, the one scavenger willing to fight a condor over a kill, will come back later in this story as a danger of a more serious kind.

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• 4. A Slow Family Life

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  A condor begins looking for a mate at about the age of 6. The male courts by turning his head red, puffing up the feathers of his neck and spreading his wings. Then he approaches the female slowly. If she lowers her head, the two become mates for life.

  The pair builds a simple nest in a cave or a cliff crevice, ideally with roosting trees nearby and open ground for landing. A mated female lays a single bluish-white egg every other year, anywhere from January to April. The egg weighs about 280 grams and is roughly 67 millimeters wide. Both parents take turns incubating it for 53 to 60 days. The chick hatches with its eyes open, though it can take up to a week to free itself from the shell completely. Gray down covers the young bird until it is nearly the size of its parents. It can fly after 5 to 6 months but stays with its parents, roosting and foraging alongside them, until its second year. Ravens are the main threat to eggs, while golden eagles and bears may prey on the young.

  If an egg or chick is lost or taken, the parents lay a replacement, a habit called double clutching. Biologists exploit it by removing the first egg and raising the chick with a puppet. The parents then lay a second egg, or even a third, and are sometimes allowed to raise it.

  In July 2024 the Los Angeles Zoo reported a record 17 chicks hatched in a single breeding season. The zoo credited new techniques, including giving two or three chicks to one surrogate adult condor. All 17 are slated for release into the wild.

  Stranger still was a report in 2021 from the San Diego Zoo. Two unfertilized eggs, from 2001 and 2009, had hatched male chicks through parthenogenesis, meaning the young inherited genes from the mother alone. The mothers had mated before, yet genetic tests found no trace of a father. Neither chick reached sexual maturity, so scientists could not learn whether such birds could reproduce.

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• 5. Deep Roots

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  In 1797, the English naturalist George Shaw described the bird as Vultur californianus. The type specimen came from Archibald Menzies, who collected it during the Vancouver Expedition, noting only that it was from the coast of California. Shaw put it in the same genus as the Andean condor, Vultur gryphus. Later experts moved it into a genus of its own because of its different markings, slightly shorter wings, and the Andean bird's habit of killing small animals. The new name, Gymnogyps, comes from Greek words for bare and vulture, and the word condor itself comes from the Quechua word kuntur.

  Where the condor belongs on the tree of life is still argued. New World vultures look and behave like Old World vultures but evolved from a different ancestor on a different continent. Some earlier authorities thought they were closer to storks, and the condor's foot supports that idea. Its middle toe is greatly lengthened, and its talons are straight and blunt, built for walking rather than for gripping prey. Others keep the New World vultures with the Old World group in the order Falconiformes. The American Ornithologists' Union, in its 51st Supplement of 2010, placed the California condor in the family Cathartidae, order Cathartiformes.

  Fossils show that Gymnogyps once ranged across the Americas during the Pleistocene. Gymnogyps kofordi lived in Florida and Gymnogyps howardae in Peru. A condor from Cuba was first named Antillovultur varonai and later recognized as Gymnogyps varonai, possibly descended from a founder population of California condors. A larger Late Pleistocene form, sometimes called Gymnogyps amplus, had a wider bill and weighed about as much as an Andean condor. It ranged as far as Florida, where bones turn up at the Cutler Fossil Site. Some scientists think it shrank into today's condor as the last ice age changed the climate, though a study by Syverson questions that idea.

  When the megafauna died out at the end of the last glacial period, the condor's range shrank too. Five hundred years ago it still ranged over the American Southwest and the West Coast, and remains have been documented in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. The Lewis and Clark Expedition reported seeing and shooting condors near the mouth of the Columbia River.

  For many Native American peoples the condor was a figure of myth, and its role changes from tribe to tribe. In the Wiyot legend, the condor recreated humankind after Above Old Man wiped people out with a flood. The Mono tell the opposite story, in which Condor seized people, cut off their heads and drained their blood to flood the home of Ground Squirrel. Ground Squirrel later escaped and cut off Condor's head while the bird paused to drink. The Yokuts said the condor sometimes ate the moon, producing the lunar cycle, and that its wings caused eclipses. According to the Chumash, the condor was once white and turned black when it flew too close to a fire.

  Condor bones and feather headdresses have been found in Native American graves, and cave paintings of condors have been discovered. Some tribes ritually killed condors to make ceremonial clothing. When a shaman died, his clothing was considered cursed, so a successor needed new garments. Some researchers think this sacrifice hastened the bird's decline. The Miwok, Patwin, Luiseno and Pomo are known to have killed condors, but how many is hard to say.

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• 6. Many Causes Of Decline

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  Between 1992 and 2013, 237 condors died in the wild, and the causes were many. Earlier damage came from poaching, egg collecting, habitat destruction, collisions with electric power lines and poisoning by the pesticide DDT. During the California Gold Rush, some condors were even kept as pets. Because condors breed so slowly, every loss is hard to replace.

  Lead has proven the most stubborn threat. Fragments of lead ammunition left in game remains are especially dangerous to condors, whose digestive juices are extremely strong. Tests of blood from wild condors found lead matching ammunition that researchers had bought near the birds' range. Among wild deaths with a known cause between 1992 and 2013, excluding chicks and fledglings, over 60 percent came from lead poisoning. In 2015, Bruce Rideout of the San Diego Zoo Global wildlife disease laboratories said lead poisoning is the most common cause of death for juvenile and adult condors.

  California answered with the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act, in effect from the 1st of July 2008, which requires hunters in condor range to use non-lead ammunition. Lead levels in the blood of golden eagles and turkey vultures fell afterward, so the law helped other species too. The other states where condors live have no comparable law. Epidemiologist Terra Kelly warned that "lead poisoning will threaten recovery of naturally sustaining populations of condors in the wild" until all natural food sources are free of lead ammunition. Researchers add that hunters who use lead-free ammunition provide valuable food for condors and other scavengers.

  Nestlings face a different hazard. Parents sometimes feed them small bits of trash, which research suggests is the leading cause of death among wild nestlings. Tim Hauck, project director for the California Condor Reintroduction Program, put it this way: "Although extremely intelligent, condors can't always tell the difference between small pieces of trash and pieces of bone." Indigestible trash can cause impaction, starvation and death without prompt medical care.

  Power lines once killed many birds. Since 1994, captive-bred condors have been trained to avoid power lines and people, and deaths from power lines have fallen greatly. Golden eagles may also occasionally kill condors.

  In 2023, highly pathogenic avian influenza struck the Utah-Arizona flock and killed 21 condors, including 13 individuals from 8 breeding pairs. Others recovered after treatment. Sixteen condors joined a vaccine trial, and by the 2nd of February 2024-94 had received at least the first of two doses. Blood from 21 condors trapped during winter lead checks showed that about half carried antibodies to the H5N1 strain, so they had been exposed and survived.

  Inbreeding is a quieter worry. It may be behind a fatal form of dwarfism in wild condors, and a syndrome in which birds have 14 tail feathers instead of the usual 12. A 2021 study nonetheless found surprising genomic diversity. All living condors descend from 22 individuals, and one of the study's authors hopes to analyze the genomes of every one of them.

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• 7. The Rescue Gamble

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  When biologists proposed breeding condors in captivity, the idea met resistance. Opponents argued that the birds had a right to freedom, that capturing them would change the species forever, and that the cost was too high. The United States government approved the plan anyway, and the Fish and Wildlife Service created the California Condor Recovery Program in 1979. Its target was two separate populations, one in California and one in Arizona. Each would hold 150 birds and at least 15 breeding pairs.

  By the time the last wild bird was taken in, only 22 condors remained, all of them in captivity. The work of Jan Hamber had made the program possible. Her decades of field notes grew into the Condor Archives, a searchable database of condor biology and conservation.

  Breeding began at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo, with other zoos, including the Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden, joining in. Progress was slow at first because of how condors mate. Pulling the first egg and raising chicks with puppets changed that. The Condor Recovery Center at the Oakland Zoo treats birds sick from lead poisoning.

  The effort has been costly. Since World War II it has cost over $35 million, including $20 million in federal and state money, which may make it one of the most expensive species conservation projects in United States history. In 2007 the program cost around $2.0 million a year. Released birds must be recaptured from time to time and tested for lead, and some need chelation to remove it.

  Before risking real condors, the Fish and Wildlife Service ran a rehearsal in 1988 using captive Andean condors in California. It released only females, so no South American species could take hold in the United States. The trial worked, and every Andean condor was recaptured and sent to South America. In 1991 and 1992, California condors went back to the wild at Big Sur, Pinnacles National Park and Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge. Then, in 1996, they were released at the Vermilion Cliffs site in Arizona, near the Grand Canyon.

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• 8. Return To The Sky

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  Ranchers near Vermilion Cliffs worried that they could be charged if a released condor were hurt on their land. To settle that fear, the Fish and Wildlife Service designated the Arizona birds an experimental, nonessential population, so they would not affect land rules or development. Wild birth rates stayed low, and numbers climbed mainly through regular releases of captive-reared adolescents.

  The first signs of normal life came in 2003, when a nestling fledged in the wild for the first time since 1981. In March 2006, a pair released by the Ventana Wildlife Society tried to nest in a hollow tree near Big Sur. No pair had been seen nesting in Northern California in more than 100 years.

  The numbers kept rising. In October 2010 there were 100 wild condors in California and 73 in Arizona. By November 2011 the total was 394 living birds, 205 of them wild, and by June 2014 it was 439, with 225 wild. The December 2016 count was 446, of which 276 were wild and 170 captive. A key milestone arrived in 2015, when more condors were born in the wild than died there. In December 2025, the Fish and Wildlife Service put the world population at 607.

  Mexico became a fifth release region at Sierra de San Pedro Martir National Park in Baja California. In early 2007, a condor laid an egg in Mexico for the first time since at least the 1930s. A second wild chick hatched there in the spring of 2009, and local environmentalists named it Inyaa, which means Sun in the Kiliwa language. In June 2016, three chicks born at Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City were flown to the park.

  The birds also began to roam. In 2014, Condor #597, called Lupine, was spotted near Pescadero, south of San Francisco, after being released at Big Sur the year before. The same year, a pair released in Arizona nested in Zion National Park, the first successful breeding in Utah. The 1,000th chick since recovery began hatched at Zion in May 2019. In late May 2020, a condor was seen in Sequoia National Park for the first time in nearly 50 years.

  The Yurok tribe led a push to bring the condor, which they call prey-go-neesh, back to the coastal redwoods of Northern California. Birds from the Oregon Zoo and the World Center for Birds of Prey were released at Redwood National Park in 2022. The first condor brought to the site was named Paaytoqin, from the Nez Perce for Come back. He is also known as Mentor or #736. He was kept unreleased to teach the young birds, chosen for his calm nature. The first to fly free was Poy'-we-son, Yurok for the one who goes ahead. Others carry the names Nes-kwe-chokw, meaning He returns, Ney-gem' 'Ne-chweenkah', meaning She carries our prayers, and 'Hlow Hoo-let, meaning At last I (or we) fly. By March 2024-11 birds had been introduced, and by the end of November 2024-18 had been released there.

  Volunteers helped too. Condor Watch, hosted by Zooniverse, ran from the 14th of April 2014 until 2020. Citizen scientists looked through up to 175,000 motion-capture images, identifying tagged condors and marking their distance from carcasses so biologists could judge which birds risked lead poisoning. Lead scientist Myra Finkelstein said volunteers enjoyed following the "biographies" of individual birds.

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