New Day of the Condors

By Frederic Golden

Two blessed events raise hopes for a dwindling California species

Their feathers are a funereal black, and their beady, deep red eyes stare out of bald, orange heads. Their great hooked beaks seem as fearsome as scimitars and can make mincemeat of the toughest carrion. As they soar overhead on wings that can extend more than nine feet, they look like oversize buzzards, which in fact is what they are. Yet, despite their ugliness, they have captured the fancy of animal lovers everywhere.

The reason for all the interest is an ornithological first: the birth in captivity of a California condor, North America's largest land bird. The blessed event occurred not once but twice in the past two weeks at the San Diego Zoo. If the chicks live, they will explode the population of these imperiled creatures by some 10%. Only 19 still survive.

The births were a triumph for a controversial program that has had conservationists pecking furiously at each other. Over the protests of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups that oppose any human intercession while the condors fight for survival, scientists from the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service entered the birds' habitat in California's Los Padres National Forest last February and March. They snatched two fertilized eggs from two roosts and transferred them to incubators at the zoo. The eggnaping, the scientists hoped, would protect the embryos against tumbles from the nest, attacks by predators or, as happened once last year, destructive fights between condor parents over who should be in charge of egg sitting.

Condors usually produce only a single offspring every two years. That gives them plenty of time to tend their young, which take as long as seven years to mature, in a lifetime of perhaps 40 years. But this plodding pace limits the population growth of the big fidgety birds, which have been brought to the edge of extinction by hunting, loss of habitat and even stress from their contacts with humans, including perhaps overzealous researchers. Once the precious eggs were taken, the scientists felt, the would-be parents might be stirred into a new round of lovemaking.

The strategy worked. One couple immediately resumed the age-old condor courting ritual in which the female nibbles provocatively on her mate's neck. Soon there was a new egg in the roost. At the zoo, Bird Curator Arthur Risser and his crew eagerly monitored the incubation. Two weeks ago, one egg showed signs of movement. Subsequently, a chick managed to peck a peanut-size hole in the shell. Like mother condors in the wild, the zoo staffers tapped on the eggshell. When the chick's strength seemed almost sapped from its struggle to free itself, Keeper Cyndi Kuehler cut an opening to let the chick emerge.

The baby, about as big as a human fist, weighed only 7 oz. But it appeared healthy and perky. It was bathed in a salt solution, and clinging pieces of shell were removed. Then, like a human preemie, it was placed in an Isolette, a protective plastic box that guards against infection, borrowed from the pediatric ward of a nearby hospital. After an hour's rest, a midnight supper of chopped-up mice was siphoned down the chick's throat. Later the feedings were administered with the help of a puppeteer's glove designed to look like the head of an adult condor. The purpose of the ruse: to make the baby bird feel that it is a condor so that its association with humans at this crucial stage will not lead to an identity crisis, preventing future breeding.

The chick was christened Sisquoc, an old Indian name for the condor sanctuary in California's Santa Barbara County. Except for an alarming morning of lethargy, apparently caused by oversleeping, Sisquoc prospered on a diet that later included regurgitated food provided by turkey vultures and king vultures at the zoo ("It's a little pig," said Sisquoc's handlers). Last week Sisquoc was joined by a cousin. Four days prematurely, the second condor chick broke out of its shell. The new chick, slightly smaller than Sisquoc and less active, was soon begging for food. It also got a name: Tecuya, an Indian word for a mountain ridge on which condors like to roost in their Ventura County habitat.

The sex of the two birds remains a puzzle. It will probably not be solved until the chicks are strong enough to provide blood samples for chromosome tests. Risser is hoping that at least one of the chicks is a female, so it can eventually mate with one of the three male adult California condors at the Los Angeles Zoo.

The entire experiment has produced jubilation among proponents of the captive-breeding attempt, who feel their view has been vindicated. Indeed, such human efforts have begun to re-establish the peregrine falcon in Eastern cities after an absence of some 35 years. Bred and then released by Cornell University scientists, the falcons now wheel and dive among the skyscrapers. Concerned ornithologists have kept the whooping crane from almost sure extinction and helped a clutch of other birds make a comeback. The Loon Preservation Society has re-established the dwindling population of that water bird in New Hampshire by building artificial islands for nesting. The puffin, once avidly hunted for its feathers and eggs, almost disappeared from the continental U.S. It remained on only one rocky outcropping off Maine. Now, starting with chicks from Newfoundland, the Audubon Society's special puffin project is returning the picturesque birds to other Maine islands.

Whether these campaigns involve transplanted babies or snatched eggs, the animal-loving public seems to approve. Over the past two weeks, the San Diego Zoo has received more than $3,000 in unsolicited gifts for the condor effort, as well as a mountain of birthday cards for Sisquoc and Tecuya. Not bad for ugly ducklings.

--By Frederic Golden. Reported by Paul Krueger/San Diego

With reporting by Paul Krueger This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.