Two Condor encounters a century apart
ATehachapi couple were hiking about a week ago and happened upon two California Condors, which are one of the oldest, largest and rarest birds in North America. Their experience was remarkably similar to another encounter that happened 117 years earlier in the Tehachapi Mountains . . . .
The couple who saw the condors last week were my friends Les and Toshimi Kristof. Toshimi was able to take some photos of the birds, and her images accompany this story.
Toshimi described their sighting: “Yesterday afternoon (April 24) we went hiking in Sycamore Canyon in Bear Valley Springs. There was a family in front of us and they stopped and looked at something. They told us that there are two California Condors on a rock. I was able to photograph the young bird’s tag (pink #62), but unfortunately the older bird’s tag wasn’t visible. We were looking for a food source as Common Ravens and some Turkey Vultures were in the same area. We saw a very fresh dead deer right next to the stream, but I don’t know if it was killed or died of natural causes. Anyway, the afternoon hike became an exciting hike!
I guess ravens don’t like condors. Some of the ravens were brave enough to try to scare the condor. Gosh these are HUGE birds!”
The earlier, matching encounter that I mentioned took place more than a century ago, and it also involved a canyon, a rock pile, two California Condors with one older than the other, and ravens loitering about. It took place only a few miles south from where Les and Toshimi saw the condors during their Saturday hike.
It was recorded in detail by a man named C. Hart Merriam, who was one of the most famous American naturalists of his time: a mammologist, ornithologist, ethnographer, a gifted and energetic man who was one of the founders of the National Geographic Society, the American Ornithologists’ Union, the American Society of Mammologists and much more. He was doing fieldwork in the Tehachapi Mountains in 1905.
The most treasured sighting of Hart Merriam’s trip took place midday on November 9 (my birthday!) as he and a hired driver were taking a buggy and team of horses from Tehachapi to the Tejon Ranch, apparently using the Sheep Trail (Comanche Point Road).
Merriam’s journal from the time records this: “Near the Kern plains side of the hills, just where the blue oaks & gray pines fail before the hot arid atmosphere that rises from the sun-baked desert [San Joaquin Valley], is a narrow rocky canyon. It is only a short distance above a bunch of watering troughs at a little lone-willow spring.
“As we were about to cross this canyon & only a few rods above the road, I saw two magnificent California Condors sitting upright on the rocks. The nearest one slowly spread his great wings & sailed away, and the other soon followed. They were not frightened & kept in sight for nearly an hour — for we stopped & watered the horses at the troughs (had to unhook & lead them down as the water is on a steep slope below the road) & then, on the promontory overlooking the desert a little below, fed the horses & ate our lunch. During all this time the condors sailed & soared about. Once they went out over the plains, then returned & rose higher & soared up over the highest of the hills & circled together. It was a superb sight — one of the lucky events of the season for me.
“These birds (the pair seen today) were both adults. Both had yellow heads (one seemed to incline to pinkish) and both had two long triangular patches of white under the wings — the underwing coverts being white. One showed a patch of pale color on the upper side of his wings as he tipped in soaring. There were Ravens about where the condors started & by contrast they looked like blackbirds. The time of day when we surprised the condors was just before noon (exactly 11:45).”
So Merriam and the Kristofs had similar rendezvous with condors in a canyon in the Tehachapi Mountains. It is so rewarding to know that we can once again have the experience of occasional encounters with California Condors. In fact, there may be more condors in existence today than there were in 1905. Condors were already rare then, and became extinct in the wild in 1987, when all 22 remaining birds were captured for use in a last-chance captive breeding program.
With an incredible amount of hard work in the past 35 years by hundreds of biologists and volunteers, condor numbers are now up to more than 500 birds, with over 335 of them flying free in the wild.
Your chances of seeing a wild California Condor in the Tehachapi Mountains increase with each passing year. And just as Hart Merriam described 117 years ago, it remains “a superb sight — one of the lucky events of the season”. . .
Have a good week.