California Condors party hard!

[masraum]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/group-critically-endangered-california-condors-trash-womans-deck-180977682/

Over the weekend ~15 California condors descended on my mom’s house and absolutely trashed her deck. They still haven’t left,” tweeted Seana Quintero of San Francisco on Monday afternoon.

Quintero’s mother, Cinda Mickols, had gone away for the weekend and when she returned on Monday the condors, which can have a nearly 10-foot wingspan, had already firmly established their position on her back porch in the town of Tehachapi, reports Matthias Gafni for the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1987, there were thought to be just 27 California condors left on Earth. Now, there are an estimated 200 birds in the wild after captive breeding programs brought the species back from the brink. As such, a congregation of what may have been as many as 20 individuals in one spot is a rare sight to behold. But for Mickols, this spectacle of nature was bittersweet given what the birds were doing to her home.

The condors shredded a hot tub cover, knocked over plants, damaged screen doors and slathered Mickols’ newly redone deck in their excrement, Quintero tells Johnny Diaz of the New York Times.



“It looks like there was a party,” Michael Fry, a scientist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, tells Teo Armus of the Washington Post. Fry, who works on California condor conservation, tells the Post that the species is “very gregarious.” He adds that condors
“will feed communally, they tussle with each other. They might even play tug of war over a carcass. … But I don’t know what they were all doing on her deck.”

In response to Quintero’s tweets chronicling her mother’s trevails with critically endangered wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service replied via the social media platform with some context and tips for Mickols’ predicament:

Her home is located in historical condor habitat where natural food sources occur...unfortunately they sometimes perceive houses and decks as suitable perch locations.

If this happens again, hazing to preclude them from causing damage and habituation is encouraged. This includes using methods that will not harm them such as water hoses, yelling, clapping, shouting or using other preventative measures such as scarecrow sprinklers.

We also discourage people from feeding them or trying to touch them. We hope this information helps if you experience this situation again.

As of Wednesday morning, the condors had departed, per the Chronicle, but by the time the afternoon rolled around, Mickols’ uninvited guests had again started circling overhead and lurking in trees nearby.

Kari Paul of the Guardian writes that California condors once ranged all the way from British Columbia to Mexico, but habitat loss and poisoning from lead ammunition and the insecticide DDT came close to wiping them out in the late 1980s. After the population was built back up to its current—but still fragile—state through intensive captive breeding programs, California’s catastrophic 2020 fire season killed nine condors when flames consumed a condor sanctuary in Big Sur and an occupied nest. According to the Guardian, in March, the Yurok tribe announced plans to reintroduce condors to their ancestral lands near California’s border with Oregon and the Pacific Northwest more broadly.

[Seahawk]

Condors are essentially big buzzards, magnificent big buzzards.

In 1977 or so we were still running the Stanislaus River...the New Melones Dam would open a few years later.

There was a part of the river that was pond-like and slowly flowed into rock dace that had a lot of moss on it.

My passengers on the raft that day were German. I remember because the daughter was spectacular and her two brothers were funny, very funny.

About half way through the pond, a very large Condor was coasting up the river towards us, maybe six feet off the Stani.

No one said a word. It glided right over us, looked right at us: You could hear the wind over the wings.

It was quiet in the raft for a good minute.

[Captain Ahab Jr]

I was expecting this thread to be about some local college football team having a frat party, sort of like this type thing.....

https://abcnews.go.com/US/balcony-collapse-sends-people-plummeting-15-feet-rocky/story?id=77585097

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Condors are essentially big buzzards, magnificent big buzzards.

In 1977 or so we were still running the Stanislaus River...the New Melones Dam would open a few years later.

There was a part of the river that was pond-like and slowly flowed into rock dace that had a lot of moss on it.

My passengers on the raft that day were German. I remember because the daughter was spectacular and her two brothers were funny, very funny.

About half way through the pond, a very large Condor was coasting up the river towards us, maybe six feet off the Stani.

No one said a word. It glided right over us, looked right at us: You could hear the wind over the wings.

It was quiet in the raft for a good minute.

It's easy to see how they would have that effect.



All these stories "hot au pair with a painfully hot Swedish friend that was an au pair," "hot German tourist," etc....

Dude, you've gotta start coming up with pics...

[vash]

s.s.s.

[Evans, Marv]

I saw an article a couple of days ago saying this happened in a small town named Tehachapi between Bakersfield and the Mojave desert. This article makes it sould like it was S.F. I lived in Tehachapi as a kid. At times we could see condors circling above the mountains to the south. I remember seeing maybe 12 to 15 doing this once. This was 35+ years before they were declared endangered.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by masraum

Dude, you've gotta start coming up with pics...

All locked away in the greatest cinema known to man, the minds eye.

I was a water rafting guide from 1976 to 1981...to paraphrase HST: “I bought the ticket, I took the the ride.”

I have seen things.

[Sooner or later]

Bad ass. I like the visible tags..

Red 52 hatched 3/8/2017 LA Zoo
Red 39 hatched 4/17/2016 LA Zoo
Green 96 hatched 5/9/2015 San Diego Wild Animal Park - named "Pali"

https://www.condorspotter.com/

[thor66]

You know those birds are saying "Endangered my ASS - hold my carrion and Watch This!"