Condor 828 in late spring, 60 days old | Photo: National Park Service
The staff at Pinnacles National Park made a happy announcement on Friday; a five-and-a-half-month-old California condor chick successfully flew out of its nest in the park last week. That's the first time a baby condor has fledged at Pinnacles since the 19th Century.
The baby condor, dubbed Condor 828, hatched in April of this year from an egg laid in February. Baby condors typically remain in their nests for their first six months, which means Condor 828 is developing ahead of schedule. According to the National Park Service, Condor 828's precocious first flight from her nest last week was observed closely by her doting mother, Condor 236 - released by condor captive breeding program biologists at Big Sur - and dad Condor 340, released at Pinnacles.
Since then, says Pinnacles condor program manager Rachel Wolstenholme, little 828 has been getting to know her nest's immediate surroundings.
--
--
She's doing great, Wolstenholme told KCET. She's doing exactly what she's supposed to be doing after fledging: making flights from tree to tree, spending a lot of time just hanging out in the treetops.
related
Repeal of Californias Lead Ammo Ban Fails -- For Now
Condors Throw Dead Sea Lion Party at Big Sur
Report: Fracking Imperils Southern California Residents, Wildlife
1 of 7
next
Condor 828 is the first successfully fledged condor chick Pinnacles has seen since the 1890s. Condors have nested in the park in recent years, and even laid eggs that hatched out, but modern life is tough on baby condors. We've had eggs that didn't hatch, said Wolstenholme, and a few chicks that hatched but didn't make it to the fledging stag. Chicks are very vulnerable to predators.
The young condor's flight from the nest gives us a strong sense of hope, said Karen Beppler-Dorn, superintendent of Pinnacles National Park. However, our hope is tempered by the challenges that still exist for her and all wild condors.
California condors have the longest wingspan of any bird native to North America, with some individuals reaching just under ten feet from wingtip to wingtip. Only the trumpeter swan edges out the condor from being North Americas heaviest bird: 25-pound condors are not particularly uncommon. With a lifespan of up to 60 years, condors are also among the longest-lived birds in North America.
Sadly, wild condors rarely live out their full allotted 60 years these days, as they contend with the hazards of the modern world. Condors are doing better these days than they were a generation ago, but thats due to the prodigious and expensive efforts of wildlife biologists. In 1987, the total world population of California condors had fallen to 27, all of which were captured that year in an attempt to preserve the species through captive breeding. For the last 15 years biologists have been reintroducing condors into the wild in California, Arizona, and Baja California. Though there have been some successful fledges like 828's, the majority of the free-flying California condor population has been hatched in captivity and released into the wild by biologists. Without the captive breeding program, the birds wouldn't be able to replenish their numbers quickly enough to maintain a stable population, much less a growing one.
That's due to a number of factors, from a scarcity of large carrion for the birds to eat to environmental hazards such as powerlines. But one of the biggest threats to condors is lead poisoning, generally coming from bullets or lead shot the condors find in scavenged game. Condors have a habit of selecting and ingesting small hard fragments found in carrion, which may have helped the birds get enough calcium back before the advent of lead ammo. But that habit often means the the birds will carefully pick out and ingest lead ammo in a carcass or hunter's gutpile. Lead poisoning may be responsible for a third or more of condor deaths in the wild.
828 with her father, Condor 340. Male condors do much of the work teaching fledged chicks how to behave once they leave the nest. | Photo: NPS
Use of lead ammunition has been banned since 2008 in condor territory in California, and a statewide ban will take effect in 2019. Condor advocates hope the ban will make it easier for condors to go about their business without ingesting the deadly heavy metal, increasing the species' chances of eventually surviving without help.
In the meantime, Condor 828's so-far successful entrance into the world is bringing wildlife biologists hope for the future of the species. Condors nesting in the wild and surviving on their own is what it's all about, said Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society, which first initiated condor releases in the Big Sur-Pinnacles area of central California in 1997. This is yet another milestone towards that goal.
Banner: an adult California condor in Arizona, 2013 | Photo: Michael Arrighi, some rights reserved
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Condor 828 in late spring, 60 days old | Photo: National Park Service 
