California Condor #X9 Flight #2

The California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus), also called California Vulture and Royal Vulture, is the largest flying bird in North America and is... more

by Morris Finkelstein

Title

California Condor #X9 Flight #2

Artist

Morris Finkelstein

Medium

Photograph

Description

The California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus), also called California Vulture and Royal Vulture, is the largest flying bird in North America and is “Critically Endangered”. It measures about 23 pounds in weight and about 46 inches in length, with a wingspan of about 9.5 feet. By the late 1980’s, the California Condor was nearly extinct with the last birds housed at the San Diego Zoo and the Los Angeles Zoo, and none left in the wild. The primary reason for the decreasing numbers of this species was, and still is, that they feed only on the carrion (of mostly mammals), much of which is tainted with the poisonous lead of hunters’ ammunition. With aggressive breeding of Condors in captivity and release into the wild (with tags and radio transmitters), their numbers are increasing slowly.

Adults are mostly black with a long white triangle on the front half of the undersides of the wings. Adults’ heads and necks are mostly featherless, and colored yellowish to orange on the heads, and gray, red, yellow, and orange on the necks. Juveniles have blackish faces with downy dark feathers on their heads and necks. Condors usually have strong pair bonds lasting years with mutual grooming, courtship displays, and breeding. A mating pair will produce a single egg about every other year, and take turns incubating the egg. The chicks’ age at first flight is about 5 months. Young Condors are sexually ‘immature’ for about 6 years and begin breeding between 6 years and 8 years of age. While the natural life expectancy of a Condor is 60-70 years, the actual life expectancy in the wild is far lower due to a high mortality rate. As of 2014, there were 200 California Condors in captivity and 232 in the wild distributed in California, Utah, and Arizona.

California Condor #X9 was photographed in flight above the new Navajo Bridge span with a colorful cliff background on 7-26-2021. I used a Nikon D850 camera body and a Nikon 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR lens to capture this image. Settings: 1/3200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 560. The Navajo Bridge consists of two steel arch bridges crossing the Colorado River at Marble Canyon, near Page, Arizona; the newer of the bridges (built in 1995) carries vehicles and the older bridge (built in 1929) is for pedestrians. These spans are about 470 feet above the Colorado River, ranking them among the highest bridges in the United States. In the background behind the bridge spans are Echo Cliffs, located within the Navajo Nation, which are 20 miles east of Grand Canyon National Park. Many thanks to FAA photographers Jurgen Lorenzen, Mark Miller, and R. Christopher Vest, to Henry Detwiler, and to Cathy Hamilton at the Ventana Wildlife Society, for suggestions about where to locate California Condors; thanks to my wife Debbie for patiently joining this adventure of seeing and photographing a "critically endangered" life bird.

I am honored that my photograph was featured in the Fine Art America groups:
Promote Your Work Here And Get Noticed, 8-11-2021
Four Seasons, 8-14-2021
Showcasing The South, 8-14-2021
Your Very Best Photography, 8-16-2021
Wildlife One-A-Day, 8-17-2021
Poetic Poultry, 8-18-2021
Pure Nature Photography, 8-18-2021
Birds In Flight, 8-22-2021
The Art Network, 6-17-2022
Your Best Work, 9-23-2022
USA Photographers Only, 9-25-2022
The Art Of FAA, 9-30-2022
A Birding Group - Wings, 1-26-2023

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Uploaded

August 10th, 2021