Big Birds, Little Birds and Owls

While hiking in Zion National Park last weekend with my wife Maggie, I rounded a corner and came face-to-beak with North America's largest land bird, a California Condor. Now normally I'm not all that interested in birds but I was excited that #75 clearly fit into my complicated bird classification system: big birds, little birds and owls. With a wing span up to 9ft. and a weighing in at 20 pounds, I'll easily place #75 as a big bird. After a little bit of research it looks like #75 is a male condor hatched in 2002. I knew about the Condor rehabilitiation program at the San Diego Zoo but had no idea just how rare these birds are; as of November 2008, there were 328 California condors in the world, over half of which lived in the wild. These 328 came from 22 birds captured in 1987.  

More information on these incredible birds can be found at California Condors Conservation and wikipedia