Condors

Yes, that’s seriously cool.

So around 504 condors now and numbers going up. That’s great news!

I was in Rancho Palos Verde’s and saw a large flock of peacocks overhead. I did see a lone condor in Lompoc many years ago. Very cool.

We had a condor fly back and forth over us as we were crossing a ridgeline in Patagonia, and it was a memorable moment. Especially since there was relatively little wildlife there overall.

Dan, we had a funny experience in El Chalten.  WE’d just finished hiking the Cerro del Aguila trail there (Patagonia, for those keeping track at home) in the hopes of seeing condors, but were skunked.  So we came back to the trailhead to talk to a ranger in the visitors center there, who told us about the calafate bushes and their berries.  As we went outside for him to show us an example of the calafate, a condor soared no more than 25 feet overhead.

Yow!  Sometimes the best way to find something is to stop looking!

Mt. Diablo and environs sustains a mountain lion population, and of course plenty of deer and other wildlife.  It’s extensive. So is Tilden Park a few miles ‘as the condor flies’ to the west, near Berkeley and Oakland. there are tons of grassland hills between. Here’s hoping for the best.

of course, condors only eat dead animals. still, I’ve often found the remains of deer carcasses when out walking the hills.

Eythal mercaptain is added to gas so it smells like a corpse. Vultures circling overhead can be a sign of a gas leak.

That is very cool.  After a glimpse on a GCNP backpacking trip 2 years ago, we had a fabulous sighting of two condors this year on the South Rim trail 1/2 mile west of the Bright Angel Trailhead.  After circling, they landed 80 feet from the trail and stayed there for 40 minutes.  We could read their tags and googled their bios (where hatched, age, gender, reproductive history).

Apex species (and any slow-maturing species) take a long time to recover once we stop shooting / poisoning them – mountain lions, grizzlies, condors, and 48-state bald eagles.  Brown pelicans and peregrine falcons rebounded quickly (quicker maturity and large brood sizes) after DDT was banned.  And wolves re-established themselves in Yellowstone pretty quickly.  The few frogs in the Sierra that survived the worldwide amphibian epidemic of the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis due to their genetics are repopulating areas with the help of biologists transporting survivors back to old habitats.   That, and eliminating planted trout where they weren’t natural, are allowing them to come back from the brink.

We definitely have no shortage of mountain lions in CO, and we haven’t stopped shooting them yet. Although, I think it might be on the ballot soon. Based on my own anecdotal observations, bald eagles seem to be doing well. I love to see them.

I’m following the wolf population with great interest.