California Condors at Pinnacles National Park

We had a geology field trip to Pinnacles National Park today. We spent most of the time on the rocks, of course, but I couldn't help but keep an eye out for birds, especially the elusive California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus). The nation's newest national park is one of the new homes for a bird that only thirty years ago was extinct in the wild.

The Condor once soared over much of the continent, but the extinction of the megafauna 12,000 years ago was the beginning of their decline. By the time of European occupation of the western United States, the population may have been down to a few hundred individuals. Habitat loss and ingestion of lead shot from dead carcasses decimated the remaining population and by the 1980s the entire population was down to a mere 27 individuals. The last of the wild population was captured in a desperate attempt to propagate the species through captive breeding.

The survival of the species hung by a thread, but very slowly the captive population grew and by the mid-1990s, the first of the captive-bred birds were released back into the wild. Populations were established in several widely separated localities in California, Arizona, and northern Mexico. The first Condors were released at Pinnacles National Park in 2003. In 2017, the total world population was 463, and there were more birds in the wild than there were in captivity.

As I noted before, I was watching for Condors, but I wasn't seeing any. It wasn't until we were gathered at the vans in the late afternoon preparing to leave the park that one of my students pointed up above, and there were five of them wheeling and soaring in the sky almost overhead. It was the closest I've been to them in California (I've had some close encounters at Grand Canyon National Park). It was a fine ending to a very nice day!

Return from Back of Beyond: California Condor on the Colorado River

Did you notice something missing from your life lately? Like maybe the posting of bird pictures here on Geotripper's California Birds? Well, it is true: I've been missing in action, as I was co-leading a two-week course on the Geology and Archaeology of the Colorado Plateau. I had barely a moment to myself, and literally no access to the internet from a laptop.

In terms of bird sightings, the trip was a mixed bag. We certainly saw a large number of birds, but there was little time for careful observation. I will be posting some of them in coming days. But we did have some interesting surprises at times. The best is what we saw at Navajo Bridge over the Colorado River in Arizona upstream of the Grand Canyon. It was a pair of California Condors.

The California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is a rare bird indeed. It is one of the last remnants of the "Megafauna", the extremely large animals that populated North America during the Ice Ages. The Megafauna included the mammoths and mastodons, rhino-like animals, camels, horses, giant ground sloths and a group of nightmare-inducing predators like the Saber-tooth Cat, the American Lion, Dire Wolves, and the Short-faced Bear. All of these animals went extinct around 12,000 years ago except for the Condor. As a scavenger, these huge birds feasted on the slain bodies of the large grazing animals, and when those animals went extinct, the population of the Condors plummeted. I've read that the total number of these creatures at the time of Spanish contact was no more than a few hundred birds.

As modern civilization encroached on their remaining territory (and left lead buckshot in the carcasses of deer), the Condors lost ground and lost population. By the late 1980s there were fewer than 30 of them left in the wild, and the decision was made to capture them all and begin a program of captive breeding. It has been a great (and unfortunately rare) success story, as there are now 410 living birds, and more than half of them have been released into the wild.

Most of the "repatriated" birds are in the coastal ranges of California, but a number of them were released in the Grand Canyon region as sort of a back-up population in case of catastrophe in California. I've seen them on both the north and south rim of Grand Canyon, and once saw them perched on the Navajo Bridge. That's where our group saw a pair last week, but by the time they told me about them they had taken off and were headed west. I got a pair of fair shots of them in the air.

A Look at California Condors on International Vulture Awareness Day

California Condors on the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park

It always sneaks up to me, but today is International Vulture Awareness Day. We do need to appreciate the scavengers and cleaners of our world, but my appreciation goes a little deeper, more like admiration. My favorite member of the vulture family is a real survivor, despite our worst abuses, and great changes in their world: the California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus).

California Condor soaring over the Big Sur Coastline

California Condors are one of the few direct links we have to a world that disappeared 11,000 years ago. At that time, California and the American West played host to a diverse and fascinating megafauna that included mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, giant elk, bison, horses, and camels, , and a frightening array of predators, including dire wolves, American lions, short-faced bears (bigger than grizzlies), and saber-tooth cats. All gone now, lost to an extinction event that is still not understood: it could have been predation by humans, climate change, even an unfortunately-aimed asteroid impact. The condor, one of the largest of birds, was the clean-up crew when the giant predators of the giant grazers were done eating. When the megafauna disappeared, the condors went into a decline, and the largest species of condors went extinct. Their near-extinction was not necessarily the fault of humans; there may have been only 300 or so when the Spaniards first explored California. Still, we in the modern era didn't help matters. We shot them, or poisoned them with lead buckshot to the point that there were only about two dozen left in the 1980's.

Wildlife biologists stepped in at that point, capturing the last remaining wild birds in 1987, and beginning a program of captive breeding. It has been a reasonable success, with 435 birds alive today. 268 of them have been released into the wild, with populations in Grand Canyon (top picture), the Zion Park region, the Coast Ranges of California (second photo), and part of northern Mexico.

Take a moment to thank the scavengers of our world!

(Note: this is an edited/updated version of one of my earliest posts at Geotripper)