Ventana Wildlife Society - Condor Reintroduction Field Notes

Foggy mornings, hot afternoons, and cold nights are typical June weather in Big Sur, which provide great thermals for the birds to soar on. We are seeing the birds very regularly near the coast, where an onslaught of sea lions carcasses has washed up this month. We have had a record number of carcasses this month located by the flock. The condors absolutely love sea lions because of the ample blubber, but it seems that many of them starved, thus little blubber to be had. It has been a treat for the tourists flocking to Big Sur to see the birds flying right over their heads at this amazing spot, and we are happy to spend time sharing our knowledge about the birds to the viewers. During one of our viewing sessions, biologist Mike Tyner noticed something unprecedented - a condor killing then feeding on an emaciated sea lion pup! This behavior had never before been documented.

This attraction to the sea lion haul out has put a wrench in our trapping plans, which we are still wrapping up slowly. We are down to a handful of the adult birds, which have become more and trap-shy the older they get. We have had several high lead incidences in this season of trapping, and are thankful that many birds’ lead levels were low. We hope to finish soon, as spending the daylight hours in a blind in June can be long, hot and uncomfortable.

The wild chick in Big Sur was visited this month for a 60 day check up. At the previous check up we learned that the chick is a boy! He currently weighs a healthy 11 pounds, and was very feisty, hissing and grunting at us. His mom, 171, was on the nest ledge looking very upset at us for disturbing her chick, which is exactly the behavior we hope to see from a parent. The crew from Pinnacles was able to confirm another active nest this month. Pair 219 and 310, male/female respectively, is caring for a healthy chick in a very remote canyon in the Los Padres National Forest. This makes three wild chicks from central California this year, and two of them are still in their wild nests! (Note: One wild chick was removed due to high lead and is being raised in isolation at LA Zoo).

During our nest entries, we have located several pieces of micro-trash that are being brought to the chick from the parents. When we enter the nests, all trash is removed, but we are trying also to find trash at the source (Big Sur’s Highway One) before it is brought to the nest. We have begun hosting volunteer clean up days twice a month where we clean the highway pullouts/overlooks most frequented by the birds. The two in June were a success, and everyone saw condors while cleaning! We have two scheduled in July for the 9th and 18th from 9am-noon, so please join us if you have the time! Contact Sayre at 831-624-1202 …until next time.

Now that the condors are in full breeding season, May couldn’t have been busier! The Big Sur coastal nest is doing great, as the crew watches intently from a hidden spot to observe the chick and its interactions with the parents. We are seeing regular feedings by Mom (171 aka “Traveler” and Dad (194 aka “Whalewatcher”); also great social interactions, including head nuzzling and mutual allopreening (cleaning each others’ feathers). It is important for young condor chicks to learn these social skills from their parents in order to successfully integrate into the flock once they fledge from their nest.

We will be visiting the nest in early June and will determine the gender of the chick as well as vaccinate it. Our nest (Male 318 and Female 317) in Pinnacles National Monument was also entered this month and it was discovered that both the chick and its parents were stricken with lead poisoning. A team began regularly entering the nest to chelate the chick until it was decided that it was best to remove the chick from the nest in order to monitor it more closely. Fortunately, the chick is alive and well at the LA Zoo, and both parents have been treated and returned to the wild.

Two ill condors were also returned to the wild this month. Male adult #204 had suffered from an injury to his wing and beak that was making it difficult for him to eat. Young female condor #501 was also having trouble feeding in the wild. After a month of rehabilitation at the LA Zoo, both birds were released, fat and happy.

We will continue our spring trapping season to check lead levels and overall health of the birds until the entire flock has been examined. One uncontrollable factor has made trapping a challenge…sea lions! The birds feasted on sea lion carcasses this month that wash up naturally along the coast. Our trap bait is no match to this delicious meal, which can make it difficult to pull the birds in our direction, but we will keep trying. With only 14 birds left to catch and process, our hopes are high to wrap things up soon.

On May 23rd VWS hosted, with huge success, our annual Wings over the World fundraising event. Thanks to the generosity of the 75 attendees, we raised nearly $50,000 for our organization. Two condors were released back into the wild, and many wonderful items were auctioned off. We are continually thankful for the support of donors unendingly dedicated to the conservation and recovery of native wildlife.

VWS will also be organizing two volunteer clean up days in June and we need your help. In order to help mitigate the trash problem in our condor nests, the condor crew and volunteers will be picking up trash on Highway 1 on June 10th and 20th from 9am-noon. Please contact Sayre at sflannagan@ventanaws.org for more information! Don’t forget to visit www.mycondor.org to learn more about the individual condors… until next month.
~The Condor Crew

During the month of April we continued to get above normal rainfall. The hills are green and the wildflowers are really showing their colors along the ridgeline as the lupine is now at full bloom. All these months of green have been a welcome change to the many years of drought we have had recently.

This month we began ramping up our supplemental food dispersal for the birds by utilizing scattered locations away from our release site. This not only promotes more natural foraging behavior among the flock, but also forces them to work a little harder to find food. Within the combined Big Sur/Pinnacles condor flock we had a total of five nests attempts this year, two of which failed. Three nests are still active, two of which already have chicks and one outlier that is still unknown. We hope that by placing food in scattered locations the condors will spend more time searching for food and less time looking for trash items they might confuse for bone fragments they need to feed to their chicks as a dietary source of calcium. We had a problem with this in past years and hope to avoid it this year by systematically removing trash from the various pullouts along Highway 1. We are planning a spring clean-up day and will be looking for volunteers to assist, please contact us by email if you would like to help:

We also began our annual spring trap-up this month and are in the process of catching every bird in the flock to administer blood lead tests. Even though in California there is a ban on the use of lead ammunition within the current range of the California Condor, we continue to catch birds with elevated lead levels.

Two of this year’s chicks will receive thirty day check-ups to evaluate their health and again administer blood lead tests. On the last check-up, at 120 days old, these condor chicks will receive a wing-mounted radio transmitter and I.D. tag which will allow us to identify the bird and monitor it’s movements after leaving the nest area. Our third nest is so remote that we have been unable to confirm they have a chick, but we strongly suspect they are in nest mode based on their consistent movements to and from the nest site. We will have to wait for this chick to follow its parents back to either Big Sur or Pinnacles before we can make it official. It could be ten months before the chick has the skills for a flight like that and only then will we be able to attach an I.D. tag and transmitter on his or her wing.

March is always an exciting month at Ventana Wildlife Society as we observe condor pairs laying and incubating eggs, crossing our fingers that their eggs will be viable and their nesting attempts ultimately successful. This month was punctuated by the capture of our only un-tagged condor, the youngest in the Big Sur flock, #538. Finally trapped after many long hours and near misses in the blind, she/he will be sexed, affixed with a radio tag, tested for lead, vaccinated for West Nile Virus, and given an overall health evaluation. As only the second wild-hatched condor in Monterey County in the past century, 538 has been observed with special pride and optimism by our staff and interns, and his/her capture is a pivotal landmark in our project and an important development towards the comprehensiveness of our recovery efforts in Big Sur.

Working with the condors is full of amazing moments, but unfortunately we also have to endure hardship when the birds that we have grown to know and love are facing their own troubles. A hopeful nest by a previously successful breeding pair has been disrupted this year by the sudden unsuspected illness of the male, number 204. We are working hard to trap him and give him medical care, wish us luck and let us hope that it is nothing too serious and that his health returns to soon.

A successful nest from last year is active once again, which is unusual as condors tend to reproduce once every 2 years. This pair, 171 and 194, produced 501 just last year, and she is already on her own after a successful fledging and doing a great job of integrating into the Big Sur flock. Perhaps encouraged by their overachieving daughter, this pair has already laid another egg this breeding season, due to hatch in early April. Their own egg was replaced by our Senior Wildlife Biologist, Joe Burnett, because of the unlikelihood that their natural egg would be successful due to possible eggshell thinning from DDE, a common contaminant that is likely accumulating in condors that feed on marine mammal carcasses. Although this is a problem now, we are hopeful that this issue will no longer be a problem in the near future and the condor will be able to make as good of a comeback as the Brown Pelican and Bald Eagle did, which both faced this same eggshell thinning problems in the past.

One of the most exciting days we had this month was when 6 birds were trapped and “processed”. Processing involves handling the birds in order to replace faulty radio transmitters, taking blood samples to check for lead levels, and performing a routine check to ensure their health. Most of the crew was present for this day, including all of the interns, for all of whom this was their first chance to handle a condor. It is no small feat to capture and hold a 20 pound condor, but the day went great and everyone was full of smiles, happy just to get to experience the condors in such a personal way, to feel their strength and appreciate them fully. Thankfully, the entire process went completely smoothly as all of the birds were healthy and released shortly after, this time with working radio transmitters that will allow us to better keep track of their flight patterns.

This month was also marked by the arrival of two Bald Eagles at the condor feeding station. Much like our current efforts with the California Condor, VWS spearheaded a successful re-introduction program with the Bald Eagle in the 1980s, and the presence of two wild unmarked birds in the canyon was a source of excitement and delight for our staff, and particularly for the veteran naturalists among us involved with the creation and ultimate success of that program.

Our next update will involve more exciting news about nests and nestlings, as we will be in the height of the breeding season: cross your fingers for more eggs and healthy nestlings! Until next month… - Elyse, Rachel & the Condor Crew

The anticipation is high amongst the condor field crew as we anxiously await our first nest in Big Sur for the 2010 season. An onslaught of heavy rain storms this month have kept the birds more stationary than usual, and we will expect eggs once the weather breaks. We currently have five pairs gearing up to nest this season, and are still keeping an eye on the other breeding age adults that could very well surprise us and nest also. As female condors approach egg-laying, behavioral indicators, such as drinking lots of water and eating bone chips, provide clues that we piece together to determine their status. Ideally, we will locate nests within days of egg-laying in order to confirm health and fertility of each new egg.

Observing the condors at Basecamp has been especially exciting this month, as all of the 2009 wild-fledged chicks have integrated with the flock. We have been observing condors 499, 501, and 538 feeding with the other birds and joining the social ranks. They tend to hang out together and it is awfully cute to watch them fight over food and play with each other. We are still trying to catch condor 538 for a health check and West Nile Virus vaccination. This bird has never been handled by humans and we don’t even know what gender he/she is yet! Once we are able to attach a radio transmitter and collect a blood sample, we will have a better idea of where it is traveling and know whether it is a boy or a girl. It is a beautiful sight to watch this condor fly around, unobstructed by tags and truly wild.

There have been some changes in our crew this month, as we have welcomed four new interns (Ben Dudek, Johanna Dunlap, Elyse DeFranco, and Rachel Perpignani) onto the crew. We are excited to have the new team, and they have jumped right in and will be spending the next six months closely observing condors and mist-netting songbirds. We also said goodbye to two outstanding interns, Karen Hotopp and Loni Silver. They will be continuing their careers in wildlife biology and we wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors. You will be sorely missed, Loni and Karen! Until next month…The Condor Crew

Winter weather came down upon us with a vengeance this month. Thunder and lightning, never common here and generally observed during the warm months, were curiously abundant in the last few weather systems. We’ve heard two accounts of Big Sur area folk witnessing lightning strikes on nearby redwood trees. Significant amounts of small hail peppered the ground. Weaving its way through this cacophony of weather were lots of rain and quite a few rainbows. Our access to backcountry monitoring areas was cut off for more than a week by slushy roads and over 6 inches of snow blanketing the local ridge tops. The condors, prudent as always in the face of sloppy weather, tucked down into large trees with thick foliage to wait it out. Observers lucky enough to be present during breaks in the storm get to see the condors’ response to their first sunshine in days.

Imagine a grove of large trees drooping in the rain and tossing in the wind. As the clouds break up and discrete rays of sunshine pierce through the grove, the water-darkened bark begins to steam. It takes only 30 seconds for the 10 condors roosting in the immediate area to emerge. They clamber out of their protected pockets and hop to a sunny perch. In their haste to dry their dripping feathers, they move nearly as one. All 10 sets of wings extend open in the same minute, and the condors pivot en masse to face the sun and capture the warmth with their huge 9 and half foot wingspans.

The first half of January was mild and not very rainy here. In an effort to document as much backcountry activity as possible before inclement weather closes in, VWS Biologist, Mike Tyner, embarked on a challenging mission. Of central California’s five 2009 nests, four had already been confirmed to have chicks. That fifth nest had never been verified, mostly because the rugged backcountry area it was situated in had no nearby trails or roads. Only the most determined condor biologist would ever trudge through miles of choked brush to observe mere glimpses of condors near a nest. This most recent trip in January was Mike’s third trip into what we fondly call the backcountry “Land of the Lost”. Previous trips did allow us to locate the nest successfully and observe the parents nearby, but we were still unable to find a location that afforded us a clear view into the nest cave to confirm the chick was actually there. We we’re fairly confident a chick was present based on the deliberate and routine movements to and from the nest cave by the parents…but we really needed a good visual of the chick, it was still a “ghost bird” to us.

Luckily, Mike’s most recent trip was timed well. As told in his own words, here are Mike’s field notes from a very historic day:
“Hiked out to the 209/236 nest observation point (OP) on the knoll Saturday morning, January 2nd, 2009. Got to the OP a little before 10am and immediately radio signaled both parents. With a little quick scanning of the scope I found 236 at the top of the waterfall. Looked like she was bathing and drinking (waterfall was flowing and probably a nice pool there). After 1/2 hour of watching 236 I scanned over to the nest area and caught a glimpse of a condor circling which then disappeared into the side canyon where the nest is. Condor looked like a juvenile but wasn't positive. Continued to watch 236 and then 1/2 hour later 209 flew over and joined her at the top of the waterfall. They messed around there for about 45 minutes as I kept scanning the cliffs for the chick. Found something that looked like a juvenile condor about 60 feet above and to the left of the parents. Took about 30 minutes until I was convinced it was 538 and then it started moving! One of the parents climbed up to it and for the next 1 1/2 hours 538 and one of the parents flew back and forth across the waterfall. Finally all three birds met up just outside the side canyon where the nest was and there was a lot of sunning and preening by the three and feeding of the chick. They were all together for another 1 1/2 hours then they flew off. I didn't see the chick again, probably went to the nest. Both parents took turns flying high above the canyon but remained in the area. When we hiked back out to the adobe mid-afternoon both parents were still there. Didn't see any extended flights by 538 other than that first glimpse of a juvenile bird circling, so he/she can at least stay in the air for a little while circling. The flights of 538 across the canyon were about 300 foot flights. 538 looked fully developed and feathers were fresh looking and seemed fully grown. I'm sure he/she could stay in the air for 20-30 minutes or more is the conditions are right. When we were out there it was partly cloudy, 60 degrees, with no wind, so not the very best flying conditions. I didn't see any golden eagles or any other raptors, condors, or ravens in the canyon during my watch. Bottom line is that 538, the parents, and the nest area seem to be working out perfectly and it's just the spot you'd expect and want to see the condors nesting. Aside from the tags on the parents it was just the sight you would have seen hundreds of years ago near a condor cliff nest this time of year.”

Mike’s exciting account was not the only stunning observation this month. Two weeks after Mike’s visual of #538, biologist Loni Silver was watching a very large group of condors using a patch of mature pine forest bordered by rolling grasslands. Many condors were perched in these large pine trees, including #236, the female parent of #538. Loni noticed a juvenile condor hovering right above #236. The juvenile was using stiff and uncoordinated wingbeats, like it had just strapped on its wings for the first time. Loni watched the juvenile flounder through the sky until it landed (more like flopped down on) the grassland. When she saw that the condor was completely untagged, she realized it was #538, who had flown over 15 miles from the nest area to join the condor flock. This was a pivotal observation, and one of those red letter observation days that we all hope for. But Loni’s field day wasn’t over yet. At dusk, Loni noticed a condor perched awkwardly on the dead top of a pine tree. She swung the scope around and realized that it was #501, another of our recently fledged chicks. This was the first sighting of #501 leaving her nest area and joining the condor flock in their favorite grove of trees. Watch a video clip of 501 learning to fly-

In-flight species comparison chart

In-flight species comparison chart - Print a copy to take with you when looking for condors