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  So when Osborne and raptor expert Chad Olsen of the U.S. Park Service found another active nest cave the next year, they tried to keep their hopes in check. “The egg was in a part of the canyon called the Inferno,” Osborne said. “It’s a narrow drainage near Hopi Point with incredible red rock walls, and the nest was at the point of the drainage.”

  Osborne and Olsen hiked down into the Inferno in August of that year. When they got close enough, they set up a sighting scope and looked into the mouth of the cave.

  “It was too dark in there to see very much, but Chad thought something was moving. Then he said something like ‘Oh my God,’ and we saw a very big baby condor come out of the darkness.” Osborne said they sat in the Inferno and watched the chick for two more days, sometimes feeling totally cut off from the rest of world and sometimes hearing the voices of the unseen crowds of tourists gathered on the distant observation points.

  Out in California, three condor chicks were seen that year. Two died quickly. The third chick appeared to thrive for months, raising hopes that it would fledge. Then, unexpectedly, it started shedding its tail and secondary feathers. The bird was taken out of the cave and flown to the Los Angeles Zoo, but by the time it arrived it was too late. Veterinarians euthanized the chick on September 14. Necropsy results revealed an irreversible lung disease and a hole in the gastrointestinal tract. Wedged into the condor’s crop were the pop-tops of three aluminum cans, shards of glass and plastic, and an eighteen-inch-long rag soaked in oil. Critics of the program said the necropsy helped prove that California was no longer safe for condors. Noel Snyder renewed his call for a broad review of the program by a panel of ornithologists with no connection to the program.

  “This is why we took the wild condors to the zoos in the first place,” Snyder said. “Putting them back into the same environment doesn’t make any sense. If we don’t reduce the lead threat in particular we’ll always have a feeding-station population of condors, and nobody I know wants that.”

  Osborne and Olsen hiked back into the Inferno in the fall to check up on the lone remaining wild chick, which was now equipped with giant wings it didn’t know how to use. “For a while it would have these activity bouts where it would flap its wings madly and run around inside the cave. Then it gave us heart attacks by coming out onto the ledge so it was facing the cliff face and beating its wings against the rocks.” The ledge was very narrow and the cave was roughly six hundred feet above the ground.

  After that, for a couple of days, the condor barely moved. Osborne and Olsen worried more. On November 5, it had another burst of energy, jumping up and down while seeming to look in fifty directions at once. Then, after seeming to calm down, it jumped off the ledge and fell, spinning and tumbling in a way that reminded Osborne of a maple leaf.

  “I don’t know if it had something in mind and overestimated its ability, but it was falling and our hearts were in our throats. The wings were partially extended and the bird was trying to right itself, but the most it could manage was a kind of controlled plummet.” After falling about two hundred feet, the condor briefly disappeared behind a wall of rock that was jutting out of the side of the cliff; then it tumbled back into view, still out of control, with about four hundred feet to go before it would crash into the bottom of the canyon.

  Somewhere in that last four hundred feet the condor learned to fly. Not well, but well enough. “It was a surprisingly gentle landing,” Osborne said. “He stood there looking kind of shell-shocked for a minute or two. Then he started walking toward the nest cave.”

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1. The town once known as Piru City was built in the 1860s by a man named David Cook: stories about “Piru City,” California, can be found on the Web site of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society: www.scvhs.org.

  CHAPTER ONE: THE WORST OF TIMES

  1. A condor is [only] five percent feathers, flesh, blood and bone: open letter to Russell Peterson, National Audubon Society, from David Brower, Friends of the Earth, September 4, 1980.

  2. He went after the basic mathematics underlying the Bureau’s proposals and uncovered embarrassing errors: taken from John McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.

  3. “Then came my lucky day”: David Brower’s account of finally seeing wild condors is taken from his essay, “Any Places That Are Wild,” from “The Uneasy Chair,” Earth Island Journal (Spring 1987).

  CHAPTER TWO: WING IN A GRAVE

  1. The Pleistocene epoch was the condor’s prime: descriptions of Pleistocene scavenging birds devouring the carcass of a mammoth are based in part on Fritz Hertle, “Diversity in Body Size and Feeding Morphology within Past and Present Vulture Assemblages,” Ecology 75, no. 4 (1944); and in part on Roger Caras, Source of the Thunder: The Biography of a California Condor, Little, Brown, 1970.

  2. Is not the California condor a senile species: taken from Lloyd Miller’s essay, “Succession in the Cathartine Dynasty,” Univ. California Los Angeles, 1942.

  CHAPTER THREE: MORE LIKE RELATIVES

  1. Condors also play a crucial role in the stories: descriptions of condors with supernatural powers are taken from the following: E. W. Gifford and G. H. Block, “Above Old Man Destroys His First World, as told by the Wiyot Indians of Humboldt County,” and “The Making and Destroying of the World as told by the West Mono Indians of Madera County,” in Californian Indian Nights: Stories of the Creation of the World, of Man…, A. L. Clark Co., 1930, repr. Univ. Nebraska Press, 1990; Hubert H. Bancroft, “Myths and Languages,” The Native Races, vol. 3, A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1882; Dwight D. Simmons, “Interactions Between California Condors and Humans in Prehistoric Far Western America,” Vulture Biology and Management, Univ. California Berkeley, 1984; passages from Carroll De Wilton Scott, “Looking for California Condors,” 1935, 1945, ms. in Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California; A. L. Kroeber, Indian Myths of South Central California, Univ. California Berkeley, 1907; E. W. Gifford, Miwok Cults, Univ. California Berkeley, 1926; and E. W. Gifford, Central Miwok Ceremonies, Univ. California Berkeley, 1955.

  2. But the authors of a recent book on condors take a much more pessimistic view: rough calculations of the long-term effects of thousands of years of condor sacrifice practiced by Indian tribes are based on Noel Snyder and Helen Snyder, The California Condor: A Saga of Natural History and Conservation, Academic Press, 2000.

  3. Not long afterward, an angry group of twenty activists and Indians gathered: descriptions of the fight between Chumash Indians not recognized by the federal government and the Fish and Wildlife Service are based in part on “Ceremonial Dance for Wild Condors atop Mt. Pinos, June 8, 1987,” press release, Earth First!, Earth Island Institute, Committee for Wild Condors, spring 1987; press release, Sept. 3, 1986, Quabajai Chumash Indian Association; Resolution Number 2–86, Native American Heritage Commission, “Memorandum: Chumash Indian/California Condor Program Controversy,” California Department of Fish and Game, 1986; letter from Sidney Flores, attorney representing Coastal Chumash Clan, August 1, 1986.

  CHAPTER FOUR: SWAY OF KINGDOMS

  1. Off the coast of Terrestrial Paradise, 1602: imagined description of a scurvy-ridden sailor thinking he sees griffins eating a dead whale on a beach in California is based in part on Harry Harris, “The Annals of Gymnogyps to 1900,” The Condor (Jan. 1941).

  2. Alta California was God’s gift: descriptions of cattle in the Mission and Rancho eras are based in part on L. T. Burcham, California Range Land: An Historico-Ecological Study of the Range Resources of California, Div. of Forestry, State of California, 1957; and Tracy I. Storer and Lloyd P. Tevis, The California Grizzly, Univ. California Berkeley, 1995.

  3. Then there were the grizzly bears: descriptions of grizzly bears and their interactions with condors are based in part on passages from Storer and Tevis, California Grizzly; Charles F. Outland, Mines, Murders and Grizzlies: Tales of California’s Ventura Back Country, 1969, repr. Ventura Co. Museum of His
tory and Art, 1998; and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, “Grizzlies at the Calaveras,” in Ranch and Mission Days in Alta California, repr. in Don DeNevi, ed., Sketches of Early California, Chronicle Books, 1971.

  4. There’s another key link between the condors and the bears: accounts of the importance of chaparral to the survival of both grizzlies and condors are based on Charles M. Goethe, The Elfin Forest: A Glimpse of California’s Chaparral, self-published, 1953; Fred G. Plummer, Chaparral: Studies in the Dwarf Forests, or Elfin-Wood, of Southern California, USDA Forest Service, 1911; and Storer and Tevis, California Grizzly.

  CHAPTER FIVE: COLLATERAL DAMAGE

  1. The California gold rush hit the condor’s world like a meteor from the East: early descriptions of the damage wrought by logging and mining come from miner and artist J. D. Borthwick, as cited by David Beesley in Crow’s Range: An Environmental History of the Sierra Nevada, Univ. Nevada Press, 2004.

  2. Condors weren’t common in the flatlands: descriptions of the geographic damage done to the Sierra by the gold rush are based largely on “The Sierra Gold Made,” Beesley, Crow’s Range.

  3. “Yonder it descends in a rush of water-like ripples and sweep”: John Muir’s musings on the power of the wind after climbing up a tree in a heavy storm are taken from “A Wind Storm in the Forests,” The Mountains of California, Century Co., 1894.

  4. Condors may also have nested in the trees in these grand forests: Muir’s description of the fires burning through the tops of giant forests in the night are taken from Edwin Way Teale, ed., The Wilderness World of John Muir, Houghton Mifflin, 1954.

  5. The market for the wood of these giant trees: based on J. S. Holliday, Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California, Univ. California Berkeley, 1999.

  6. One forty-niner described his wagon train as a rolling armory: Holliday, Rush for Riches.

  7. Condors near the mining fields were shot dead for the hell of it: the account of miner and pony express rider Alonzo Winship sneaking up on a sleeping condor and whacking it about the head and neck with a shovel comes from M. L. Herman, “The Capture of a California Condor in El Dorado, Colorado,” The Condor 2, no. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1900).

  8. Life got even harder for the condors in the 1850s: broad accounts of the damage done to California’s wildlife by “market-hunters” are taken from Holliday, Rush for Riches, and Raymond F. Dasman, “Environmental Changes before and after the Gold Rush,” in James J. Rawls and Richard J. Orsi, eds., A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California, Univ. California Berkeley, 1999.

  9. “There were five horses packed with buffalo robes”: accounts of the market hunt during which the famous outdoorsman and bear hunter James “Grizzly” Adams saw his first and last California condor are taken from Theodore Hittell, The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California, Towne & Bacon, 1860.

  10. California condors got meaner and bigger in the late 1800s: Alexander Taylor’s famously inaccurate description of “The Great Condor of Northwest America” as a carnivorous outlaw bird a cattle or sheep rancher had every right to shoot or poison was initially published in The California Farmer (Nov. 1854), and then republished in Hutchings’ California Magazine in March 1959.

  11. Ornithologist Adolphus Heerman said that scenario repeated itself: from Pacific Railroad surveys as cited in Harris, “Annals of Gymnogyps to 1900.”

  12. In most of the state, the grizzlies were in full retreat: accounts of grizzly hunting in the mountains of south-central California are from Outland, Mines, Murders and Grizzlies; Storer and Tevis, California Grizzly; Susan Snyder, Bear in Mind: The California Grizzly, Heyday Books, 2003; and Allen Kelly, Bears I Have Met—And Others, Drexel Biddle Publishers, 1903.

  13. Even the law-abiding citizens seemed to be a little off: accounts of bandits terrorizing stages being hauled over the top of the pass that separates Southern Caifornia from the Great Central Valley come from John Robinson, “Tiburcio Vasquez in Southern California: The Bandit’s Last Hurrah,” California Territorial Quarterly, no. 1400 (Fall 1996).

  14. Lechler also liked to stress that the first recorded gold strike: one of the few descriptions of the hollow see-through quill of a foot-long condor feather being used to carry and measure out gold dust comes from John Bidwell, Life in California before the Gold Discovery, Lewis Osborne, 1966 (written by Bidwell in the 1890s about the 1840s).

  15. Apparently Cooper hadn’t seen the condor for eight years: the story of ornithologist J. G. Cooper’s encounter with a docile condor on a beach in what would later be known as Orange County comes from J. G. Cooper, “A Doomed Bird,” Zoe 1 (1890).

  CHAPTER SIX: SKIN RECORD

  1. When his short, spectacular career began in the early 1800s: descriptions of John K. Townsend’s life rely on the introduction to Townsend’s The Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, 1939, repr. Oregon State Univ. Press, 1999.

  2. Thrilled to finally see the bird he’d dreamed of in the flesh: the story of his fight with a wounded condor in Oregon was told by Townsend himself in “California Vulture,” The Literary Record and Journal of the Linnean Society of Pennsylvania College 4, no. 12 (Oct. 1848).

  3. No one would have questioned Townsend’s need to kill: books that did a lot to shape my attitudes toward this era include Barbara Mearns and Richard Mearns, The Bird Collectors, Academic Press, 1998.

  4. All but one of the condors that were sent overseas left the country as carcasses: the imagined account of the voyage taken by the only living condor ever to be shipped overseas is based primarily on Harris’s “Annals of Gymnogyps to 1900.”

  5. The only group the scientists did not blame was their own: accounts of the life and work of Joseph P. Grinnell come from the following sources: Alden Miller, “Joseph Grinnell,” Systematic Zoology 13, no. 4 (Dec. 30, 1964); Joseph Grinnell, “Old Fort Tejon,” The Condor 7 (Jan.–Feb. 1905); Joseph Grinnell, Joseph Grinnell’s Philosophy of Nature: Selected Writings of a Western Naturalist, Univ. California Press, 1943.

  6. California’s condor owners said their birds could do all that and more: stories about pet condors, especially the bird known as the General, come from the following sources: Frank H. Holmes, “A Pet Condor,” The Nidologist (date unknown); William L. Finley, “Home Life of the California Condor,” The Century Magazine 75, no. 3 (Jan. 1908); William L. Finley, “Life History of the California Condor,” The Condor 10, no. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1908); and William L. Finley, “The Passing of the California Condor,” The Condor (1926).

  CHAPTER SEVEN: EGGMEN

  1. I have a picture of an egg collector on my desk: most of what I know about eggs of condors I learned from Lloyd Kiff, a former oologist who now works for the Peregrine Fund. Kiff very kindly lent me the unpublished studies he has done of almost every collected condor egg now in existence.

  2. A flat wooden tray full of birds’ eggs rests in Kelly Truesdale’s lap: the rest of what I know about the egg collector Kelly Truesdale comes from Ian McMillan, Man and the California Condor, E. P. Dutton, 1968, or from William Dawson’s account of a condor egg–collecting trip he took with Truesdale once; that account is part of Dawson’s massive study, The Birds of California, South Moulton Company of Los Angeles, 1923.

  3. Kelly Truesdale starred in some of the best pulp nonfiction: accounts of some of the crazy things egg collectors used to do are taken mostly from Joseph Kastner, A World of Watchers: An Informal History of the American Passion for Birds, Sierra Club Books, 1986; articles that also shaped my thoughts included Harry H. Dunn, “How I Found the Nest of a Condor,” The American Boy (Feb. 1907) and H. G. Rising, “The Capture of a California Condor,” The Bulletin of the Cooper Ornithological Club 1, no. 2 (Spring 1889).

  4. “ And as he drove back to headquarters”: the quote is from Earle Crow, Men of El Tejon, Ward Ritchie Press, 1957.

  5. Everyone who’s ever lived in these small towns: the story of the St. Francis dam disaster is
best told in Charles F. Outland’s Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St. Francis Dam, A. H. Clark Co., 1963.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: CARL KOFORD

  1. The best thing that can happen: introductory quote and others that clearly follow are from H. H. Sheldon, “What Price Condor?” Field & Stream (Sept. 1939).

  2. The jolting launch makes the pilot and crew of the plane: quotes I imagine Koford thinking while he’s flying a scout plane in World War II are based on Carl Koford, The California Condor, Dover, 1953.

  3. Carl Koford is the patron saint of condor field research: notes taken by Koford in the field are transcribed from a copy of his field notes kept at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley.

  4. Koford hitched his first ride into condor country in the spring of 1939: the letters of introduction from Joseph Grinnell that Koford carried in the field were supplied by the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley.

  5. “Carl was frugal”: Ian McMillan’s description of Koford’s beat-up car comes from McMillan, Man and the California Condor.

  6. These two men were Koford’s best friends in the field at the time: allegations that Koford often handled condors in their nests before the start of World War II are based on films the late Ed Harrison showed me in his office, and photographs Koford took of Harrison in the back of a cave at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary, holding the condor chick known as Oscar.

  7. This was not a notion that went over very well in the scientific community: my views of Koford’s complicated legacy were shaped by an unpublished manuscript provided by Roland Clement, former science director at the National Audubon Society; by Snyder and Snyder, The California Condor; and by the text of the only lengthy interview Carl Koford ever sat for, in David Phillips and Hugh Nash, eds., The Condor Question: Captive or Forever Free? Friends of the Earth, 1981.