![]() Bald and golden eagles ( Haliaeetus leucocephalus and Aquila chrysaetos, respectively) are also steady flyers with horizontally held wings, but they are significantly smaller (2.5 ft shorter wingspread). The condor’s unflapping, steady soaring flight on horizontally held wings has the look of a small airplane, unlike the rocking flight of the smaller turkey vulture ( Cathartes aura), whose wings tilt slightly upwards. In flight, the California condor may be confused with eagles and vultures. The legs may appear white from a coating of the bird’s own excretions (uric acid) for evaporative cooling, a process known as urohydrosis. Befitting a scavenger’s life, condor feet are flat with short claws better suited to walking (even running) than to killing or carrying prey. Juveniles are dark overall with black bills, dark, downy heads, and mottled white and dark gray under the wing, taking several years to attain adult coloration. Its body is mostly black, with a long triangle of white under its wing and a fainter white bar above. Bright purplish red patches of skin on the neck and crop (upper breast) area can be highlighted during displays. A ruff of feathers at the base of its neck covers or exposes the entire neck for thermal regulation. Its long, hooked beak is ivory-colored and mostly coated by fleshy tissue. Up close, the brownish-red eyes of the adult condor are set in a bare, yellow to reddish-orange colored head. A New World vulture in the family, Cathartidae, its closest relative is the Andean condor of South America ( Vultur gryphus). The California condor, Gymnogyps californianus, is the largest soaring land bird on the continent, stretching 2.8 m (9.5 ft) from wing to wing, and weighing about 8.5–10 kg (18–22 lbs). In 2022, this includes soaring over Pacific Northwest skies for the first time in a century. ![]() Note the condor’s wing tag and the bright red patches of skin on its neck and crop (bulging from a recent meal).Īn enormous winged scavenger is slowly returning from the brink of extinction to its historical haunts in western North America. A California condor flying below a turkey vulture.
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