President’s Column

Chet Ogan

Condor Ramblings

Last week our family went to Grand Canyon, the Hopi and Navajo Indian reservations, and Monument Valley. It had been over 30 years since I had been to this beautiful part of our country. The changes I noticed were the crowds of foreign tourists at Grand Canyon, the number of new homes, and the lack of carts and wagons on the reservations—they all drive pickups now. On Monday at Grand Canyon my son, daughter and I hiked down into the canyon a couple of miles while my wife took the bus tour along the West Rim Road to Hermit’s Rest. As we returned to the top of the Bright Angel trailhead, two California condors were circling overhead. At the top, one adult condor (wing band No. 119) was perched about five feet from the trail. A four-year-old (band No. 198) was still circling overhead. Three days later, after visiting the Indian reservations, Monument Valley, and the Four Corners, we were at Navajo Bridge over the Colorado River near Marble Canyon under the Vermilion Cliffs. We walked across the old historic iron bridge to the visitors center. Near the visitors center was a young lady, Kris Lightner, with a directional radiotelemetry antenna and a spotting scope. She was looking at two California condors and taking notes. In the grass near the abutment was a condor with wing band No. 123. The other bird was the same No. 119 we had seen at the top of the Bright Angel Trail at Grand Canyon. She had been tracking the birds near Vermilion Cliffs on the previous Monday and noticed that No. 119 was not in the vicinity. This is over 60 miles distant (as the hummingbird flies) from Grand Canyon, but only the condors know how far they actually circled and soared to make that distance, a mere stroll for a bird with a nine-foot wingspan.

About two dozen California condors have been released in the Vermilion Cliffs area of Utah and Arizona. Remote feeding stations have been set up in the area, at which dead calves are put out for the condors. According to the researcher, the condors are also finding carrion on their own—deer, elk, mountain sheep, ground squirrels, and the occasional roadkill dog or rabbit. Condors have good eyesight but don’t have a particularly keen sense of smell. They rely on ravens or turkey vultures to find the prey, then come to investigate the commotion. Being larger and higher on the pecking order, the condors crowd out the other carrion eaters, eat their fill, and leave the remainder for the smaller birds. Condors bathe regularly in pools and eddies in the river, then fly to cliffside perches to dry. The condors’ only competition are golden eagles, humans, and other predators.

The last condors I saw in the wild were in spring 1970 near Frazier Park circling over the borders of Kern, Los Angeles, and Ventura counties and later (1972) over Bear Divide between Placerita Canyon and Little Tujunga Canyon north of San Fernando.

More about the condor project can be seen at http://www.peregrinefund.org/notes_condor.html.