• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
Where premium quality meets exceptional value. ZEISS Conquest HDX.

California Condor - BirdForum Opus

Juveniles
Photo by Doug Greenberg
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA, August 2003
Gymnogyps californianus

Identification

109–134 cm (43-52¾ in)

  • Black plumage
  • White patches on underwings
  • Bald head (skin colour ranging from yellowish to bright red)
  • Black frill around base of neck
  • Brown-red iris
  • Grey legs and feet
  • Ivory bill

Juvenile

  • Mottled dark brown
  • Blackish head
  • Mottled grey on underside of flight feathers

Distribution

North America: confined to the foothills of the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada of California.
Once probably widespread in the western USA. In 1987 the last wild bird was captured to join the 26 other surviving specimens in captivity in an attempt to save the species.

Birds are now being released into the wild once again and are found in California, Utah, Arizona, and Baja California. In all locations, lead poisoning from ammunition fragments in carcases is a serious problem, and another serious problem is trash showing up in nests and being ingested by the chicks -- long term success of the recovery program is therefore not a given.

Taxonomy

This is a monotypic species[1].

Subspecies amplus is extinct and known only from fossils[2].

Habitat

Gorges and rocky canyons in chaparral and pine-covered, dry mountains.

Behaviour

Diet

Their diet consists of carrion, mostly of large mammals. They will also eat ground squirrels. The are scavengers.

Breeding

They nest in caves or on cliffs. A single blue-white egg is incubated by both parents for 53-60 days.

References

  1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2017. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2017, with updates to August 2017. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. Avibase
  3. Paper describing the status of the condor recovery program
  4. Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved Nov 2017)
  5. Wikipedia

Recommended Citation

External Links

GSearch checked for 2020 platform.1

Back
Top