With all the depressing stories of how badly we’ve messed up our planet, it is nice to hear a good one once in a while. This one is about the California condor. The bad part is that this enormous bird (wingspan of 10 feet) is so endangered that in 1982 there were only 22 left. They were placed in captive breeding programs, which were successful and some birds have been released. A few more problems and then I’ll get to the good part. Well, it turns out that hunters often leave their kill with lead-leaching bullets still in them. The condors eat the carrion and get lead poisoning. And some of the released birds don’t have their parents teaching them about safety, so they sit on power lines or come up to people (remember we’re the bad guys in this scenario).
Okay, now for the good news. Two condors that were released from the breeding program decided they liked one another. Condors breed for life, so it pays to be choosey. They showed mating and nesting behavior, so the good folks at the breeding program snuck their egg away and replaced it with a plastic one. Young condors often squish their eggs and we’re trying to have more condors. They tested the egg, which turned out not to be good anyway. The embryo had died, so they switched it with a fertilized egg from their breeding program that was getting ready to hatch. The pair don’t seem to have noticed that the baby looks surprisingly like the mother’s distant uncle and have taken to caring for it. It will live with it’s foster parents for a year until it’s 3″ wings grow to be 9 1/2 feet. And hopefully they won’t feed it lead-laced meat or let it sit on power lines! To emphasize how big a deal this is, it’s been almost 100 years since a baby condor was born out of captivity.
It’s hard to find a photo of a baby condor because there just aren’t many of them around. Click here to see one being raised by a condor puppet parent.
