California Condor: Giants of the Sky

Summary: Have you ever wondered what the largest bird in North America is? If you live in AZ, CA, UT, or Baja you might have seen it, the California Condor. Join Cheryl and Kiersten as they take you on a flight with this majestic bird.

 

For our hearing impaired listeners, a transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

 

Show Notes: Ornithology by Frank B. Gill

Birds of The World: The visual guide to more than 800 species, covering the entire range of bird families by Colin Harrison and Alan Greensmith

The Book of Eggs: A life-size guide to the eggs of six hundred of the world’s bird species edited by John Bates and Barbara Becker

Background bird song:  Naturescapes Backyard Birds www.naturescapes.com

 

Our email address, please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions: thefeathereddesert@gmail.com

 

Transcript

 

Host Voice: Welcome to The Feathered Desert a podcast all about desert bird feeding in the Southwest region of the United States. (Various bird calls play)

 

Kiersten: Welcome everyone to The Feathered Desert. I felt it was about time we talked about the largest bird in Arizona, actually the largest bird in North America, the California Condor. So this episode is titled: California Condor: Giants of the Sky.

 

Cheryl: That’s a good title.

 

Kiersten: Thank you!

Now, of course, this is not a bird we will be attracting to our backyard through bird feeding but it is one amazing bird that I think we can all appreciate.

 

Cheryl: Let’s start off with what this condor looks like. They have a featherless head and neck that is pink to orange in color. Juveniles have grayish-black heads. The skin on the head of adults will turn a deep red-pink during breeding season or during times of alarm.

            Huh! I don’t know that.

 

Kiersten: Yeah!

 

Cheryl: Their beak is black and hooked at the end. The majority of their feathers are black with large, white wing patches that can be seen in flight. Their legs and feet are large and gray with small black claws. They come in at a height of just about 4 feet tall when standing with a 9-foot wingspan in flight. They can weigh up to 25 pounds!

These are large birds; although, based on wing span they don’t even make it into the top ten largest in the world, but they are the largest land birds in North America.  (I know you’re going to ask! The largest flighted bird based on wing span is the Wandering Albatross with a 12-foot wingspan and the largest bird in the world is the ostrich.)

            I knew that but I didn’t know the albatross has a larger wing span.

 

Kiersten: What exactly is a condor?

The California condor is in family Cathartidae. Their scientific name is Gymnogyps californianus.

 

Cheryl: I’m so glad you’re saying this part!

 

Kiersten: (laughs) Gymnogyps is Greek from the word gymnos meaning naked and gyps meaning vulture. Californianus is Latin and refers to the birds’ range. The word condor comes from cuntur, the Inca name for the Andean Condor. Cathartidae Family contains the New World Vultures. So, yes! The California Condor is technically a vulture.

 

Cheryl: Okay, I have a question. Are the California Condor and the Andean Condor basically the same except for the range?

 

Kiersten: No.

 

Cheryl: Is there a size difference?

 

Kiersten: Yes. The Andean Condor is MUCH larger and they cannot interbreed, so they are a different species all together.

Being vultures means they do eat carrion, or dead animals, as their main diet. They prefer larger animals such as deer, elk, pigs, sea lions, whales, and domestic cattle.

Being a four-foot-tall bird, you certainly aren’t eating mice all day! (laughs)

 

Cheryl: (laughs)

 

Kiersten: Because they like domestic cattle, this is what got them in trouble with ranchers and put them on the Endangered Species List. Since they are such large birds, when people saw them on a dead cattle carcass they thought, incorrectly, that the condor had killed the cow and then began to eat it. When, in reality, they were only attracted to the cow after it was dead. Just like other vultures they are the clean-up crew of the planet. Keeping dead animals from rotting in the environment helps contain the spread of disease, so the condor’s job in extremely important to the health of the environment, which, by the way, includes us.

When a condor come across a food source, they will gorge themselves on the carcass because they never know when they will find food again. They can hold up to 3 pounds of meat in their crop, which can help them survive from one to two weeks before they need to find more food.

 

Cheryl: How do they find their food?

            California Condors are considered soaring birds. Their large flight muscles are not anchored to a correspondingly large sternum and this limits them to mainly soaring. This means that once they are in the air, they catch the warm thermals with their vast wingspan and do not need to flap their wings to stay aloft. They tend to perch on high outcroppings so they can open their wings and catch the wind with as little flapping as possible. When it is a cold windless day, they are restricted to their perches.

Soaring allows them to search wide swaths of land for food without using a lot of energy. They mainly find their food through sight. Unlike their cousins, the Turkey Vulture, they do not have a keen sense of smell. Once they have spotted an appropriate carcass, they use their hooked beaks to tear it into small enough pieces to easily swallow. They use their large heavy feet to help hold the carcass down. When other scavengers are around, they give way to the California Condor because of their large size, with the exception of Golden Eagles. California Condors get out of their way because of their large powerful talons.

I was just running that through my head because they don’t use their feet to intimidate. They use their size ad don’t need to be assertive.

 

Kiersten: Yes! They just use their feet to hold the carcass down.

           

Kiersten: What happens during breeding season?

            California Condors will reach sexual maturity at the age of six. That’s quite a ways into their life, considering our little verdin becomee sexually mature at six months! That is when they will begin looking for a mate. To attract a mate the male will puff up his neck feathers and redden the skin on his head. He will then open his wings and hold them out as he slowly approaches the female. If she accepts him by lowering her head, they mate and seal their life-long pair bond. The courtship may also continue in the air with the couple flying in tandem.

            The female will lay one egg in a cave near a cliff or on a cliff side with nearby trees and open spaces for easy landing. No discernable nest is made, the female just lays the egg righton the ground. The egg is a light bluish-white color and is about 4 ¼ inches in length, 2 5/8 inches wide, and weighs about 280 grams. Eggs are laid as early as January to as late as April. Both parents will share incubation duties which last almost 2 months. The parents bring food home to the nest for 5 to 6 months until the chicks are able to fly. The offspring will commonly stay with their parents for almost 2 years. Because of this, condor couples will only lay eggs every other year.

 

Cheryl: Two questions? Is the females larger than the male?

 

Kiersten: None of the information I came across indicated that there was a large difference in size, so I don’t know for sure. But I don’t think so.

 

Cheryl: How can the chicks learn to fly if they can’t flap their wings?

 

Kiersten: They can flap their wings a bit. They do have to build up their flight muscles but it’s not something they are doing a lot of. Flapping, I mean. They are not like out little gold finches that flap a lot in flight, but they can flap to get up and when landing.

 

Cheryl: Where are they found?

            California Condors are currently found in only three places in North America, the arid foothills of southern California near Big Sur, a small area in Northern Baja Mexico, and the border of northern Arizona and southern Utah in the Grand Canyon Area. Historically they were found all across North America from California to Florida and Western Canada to Mexico. Illegal shooting due to misunderstanding their behaviors, as mentioned above, and lead poisoning from eating carcasses riddled with lead bullet fragments was the cause of their decline.

            By 1967 they were listed as an endangered species by the federal government and by 1982 there were only 23 individuals left alive world-wide. This included captive and wild condors. In 1987, we made the very tough decision to capture all those left in the wild, approximately 17 individuals, and keep them all in captivity. This began the California Condor Recovery Program.

 

Kiersten: The California Condor Recovery Program

            This program was a bit controversial in the beginning. Two sides argued about how much intervention we should provide. One side said none at all, just let the condors be free and let whatever happens happen even if that is extinction. The other side said we need to keep them alive at any cost even if that means they survive in captivity only, since we were the ones who led them to near extinction. The goal of the program that was officially approved by the United States in 1987 was to establish two geographically separate breeding populations, one in California and one in Arizona, each site with 150 individuals including 15 breeding pairs.

            A captive breeding program was the approved way to accomplish that goal. The captive breeding program was slow going at first due to the mating habits of the condors. They need space and the ability to fly to successfully chose mates and that was not something that could be offered in a captive situation. But with some patience things got moving. In the wild, if a couple losses an egg they will lay another. This is called “double clutching”. The captive breeding program used this to their advantage by removing the first egg from the nest and sending it to be raised by humans, while the mated condors laid a second egg that they would raise themselves. The chicks raised by humans would be exposed to puppets made to look just like adult condors to keep them from imprinting on humans. The whole goal of the captive breeding program was to release these animals back into the wild.

            You certainly cannot release a 4-foot bird that has imprinted on humans back into the wild. That would be a BIG mistake.

 

Cheryl: (laughs) True!

 

Kiersten: In 1991 and 1992, California Condors were released back into the wild at Big Sur, Pinnacles National Park, and Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge. In 1996, more were released at Vermillion Cliffs in Arizona near the Grand Canyon. In 2003, the first chick fledged in the wild since 1981.  I think that’s amazing!

 

Cheryl: That just makes me excited!

 

Kiersten: With the success of reintroduction in California and Arizona, a site in Mexico was chosen near Baja California, Mexico. In 2007 a California Condor laid an egg in Mexico for the first time since the 1930s.

 

Cheryl: It gives me chills!

 

Kiersten: I know! It’s amazing!

In 2010 the California wild population was 100 individuals with 73 individuals in Arizona. A milestone was reached in 2015 when more condors were hatched in the wild than ones that died. In 2021, the total world population of California Condors was 537 with 203 in captivity and 334 flying free in the wild.

 

Cheryl: Wow! How awesome is that!

 

Kiersten: Absolutely the coolest thing ever!

 

Cheryl: What can we keep doing to helping California Condors?

            The biggest threat to these majestic birds now is lead poisoning from lead bullets. What happens is that when hunters hunting in the condors’ territory kill animals with lead bullets and do not retrieve the entire carcass, condors will do their jobs and end up consuming the fragment of the lead bullets still in the carcass. So, please use non-lead ammunition when hunting in the condors’ territory. This type of ammunition is readily available. In 2008, the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act was passed which requires the use of non-lead bullets by hunters hunting in the condor’s territory and it seems to be helping. The levels of lead in blood tested by scientists in resident birds has gone down.

            Another thing we can do is when we go camping, be clean. Take all of your trash with you when you leave. Small bits of plastic, glass, and metal have also been found in the stomach of some dead condors.

 

Kiersten: I think those are easy things to do.

 

Cheryl: Those are definite two things we can do.

 

Kiersten: The California Condor is an amazing conservation success story and we are so lucky to have this awe-inspiring bird in our state. When we put our minds to it we can make a positive difference in the world around us.