California Condor Info | New World Vultures

With a wingspan reaching 3 meters (10 ft.) prolonged, the California condor is the most important flying fowl in North America.

This New World vulture is distinguished from completely different birds by its huge black physique with white triangles under-wing and its red-orange bald head.

They inhabit the forests, rocky shrubland and oak savannas of California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, Mexico.

Unbelievable Fliers

Hovering on thermal air currents, California condors can attain speeds of 88 km/h (55mph) and altitudes of 4,600 m (15,000 ft.).

What California Condors Eat

California condors can journey 150 miles per day trying to find lifeless animals to scavenge, which embody huge mammals like cattle, deer, and sheep along with smaller mammals like rodents and rabbits.

With out an excellent sense of scent, they rely solely on their keen eyesight to hunt out meals. Many events, they merely seek for groups of various scavengers and use their dimension to scare them off the carcass.

They’re going to eat over 1 kg (2-3 lbs.) of meals at a time, after which go for days with out consuming one thing.

Nature’s Cleanup Crew

California condors are uniquely tailor-made to ending up their place as nature’s cleanup crew.

With a sturdy immune system, condors do not get sick when feasting on carrion (lifeless animal flesh) no matter consuming quite a few strains of micro organism.

Although they do not have sharp talons, they’ve prolonged, extremely efficient beaks which could tear by means of highly effective hides.

Their heads are bald for hygienic causes; a featherless face stays cleaner when submerged into carcasses.

After feasting, California condors bathe repeatedly in rock swimming swimming pools and spend hours preening their feathers. If water simply is not obtainable, they clear their heads and necks by rubbing them on grass, rocks, and branches.

California Condor Copy

Dwelling a imply of 60 years, California condors are sluggish to mature and reproduce. At 6-8 years earlier, they start to breed. A male condor will perform ritualized reveals to attract a mate.

The pores and pores and skin on his head might flip an intense red-pink shade all through courtship. As quickly as bonded, condor pairs perform acrobatic flights collectively. The pair will maintain collectively all by means of the years till one dies or they’re unsuccessful in breeding.

California condors lay their eggs in caves, rock crevices, or huge bushes (like redwoods or sequoias). They do not assemble nests nevertheless instead merely lay the egg immediately on the bottom of the cave, cavity or tree gap. They usually switch rocks spherical with their beak to reinforce the nesting web site.

Every two years, the female will lay just one egg. Whether or not it’s eradicated, she is going to be capable to lay a different egg a month later.

The feminine and male share inside the responsibility of rearing the youthful. They alternate in incubating the egg for only a few days at a time.

As quickly because the chick hatches, they take turns feeding it (by regurgitation) and warming it. At 5-6 months, the fledgling practices flying, and by two years, the juvenile is ready to forage by itself.

Conservation

The IUCN Redlist lists the California condor as critically endangered. As quickly as ranging from Canada to Mexico alongside the western coast, California condors neared extinction inside the late Seventies, with only a few dozen birds in existence.

By 1987, there have been solely 10 California condors dwelling inside the wild. Biologists launched all of them in for a captive breeding program.

Due to the diligent efforts by workers on the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo as part of the California Condor Restoration Plan, the condor inhabitants grew, and they also began to be launched once more into the wild in 1992.

Presently, there are spherical 400 California condors alive in full, with barely over 200 dwelling inside the wild.

Their inhabitants continues to be threatened by poison ingestion, most notably by lead poison from hunters’ bullets left in carcasses. Totally different threats embody illegal egg assortment, habitat loss, and vitality traces.

What You Can Do to Help

Write to your senator or congressperson encouraging a nationwide ban on lead bullets. Hunters can use copper bullets for ammunition instead which do not harm California condors within the occasion that they ingest them.

In addition to, you can help condors by donating to the Mates of the California Condor, Wild & Free nonprofit groupwhich focuses on outreach events, educating packages, and advocacy for the endangered animal.

California Condor Distribution

California condors inhabit the forests, rocky shrubland and oak savannas of California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, Mexico.

Further California Condor Sources

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