WYOMING – A California condor in flight is not an easily forgettable sight. Lewis & Clark referred to the magnificent bird as the “butifull Buzzard of the large kind” when they first came across the 9.5-foot wingspan of the massive vulture.
Since that time in 1806, the California condor has had a tough go of things. Though they live a long time in the wild—perhaps 50 to 70 years, experts believe— they are one of the slowest reproducing birds, laying only one egg every other year.
Habitat destruction, DDT poisoning, and other conflicts reduced the condors numbers dramatically for decades through the 1930-70s. Threats continue to exist. Because its diet consists of mainly meat scavenged from dead animals, the condor has been particularly susceptible to lead poisoning from leftover game shot by hunters with lead bullets.
By the early 1980s, the bird that could boast dining on the carcasses of woolly mammoths some 40,000 years ago was suddenly in danger of extinction, down to perhaps two dozen birds in all the world.
Thanks to efforts to boost the bird’s numbers, condors have been making a slow comeback. Today, there are perhaps 300 California condors in the wild, another hundred or so in captivity in breeding programs. One of these rare and endangered birds made history earlier this month.
A two-year-old female condor raised in captivity in northern Arizona and released to the wild in March, was spotted in early July perched in the Snowy Mountain Range near Medicine Bow National Forest. The condor was known to researchers as 832, visibly tagged with a “T2.”
It may have been the first time a condor had ever landed in Wyoming. Another, Condor 19, was spotted in the Flaming Forge area in 1998 but it may have been on the Utah side.
Is that far to fly for a condor? Not really. With its nearly 10-foot wingspan, the bird can travel 200 miles in a day. This one was about 500 miles from its release site and no one is quite sure where the buzzard was headed or why.
Bird enthusiasts flocked to the location near Laramie but the excitement didn’t last long. Just days after being first spotted, the bird was dead. The Peregrine Fund collected the carcass and transferred it to US Fish and Wildlife Service officials, who then sent the carcass for a necropsy to determine the cause of death. They do not suspect foul play. More likely it was a naturally-occurring mortality or possibly lead poisoning, which accounts for about 55% of deaths of the California condor in the wild.
