Andean Condor

The Andean condor is a true giant. Adults measure 100 to 130 centimeters from bill to tail, and the wingspan averages about 2.83 meters, with the largest birds reaching 3.3 meters. A few seabirds, such as the wandering albatross, have longer wings, but the condor's are much broader and have the largest surface area of any living bird. It is also the heaviest flying bird in the world on average. Males average about 12.5 kilograms and can reach 15, while females average about 10.1 kilograms, which makes the condor unusual among birds of prey, where females are normally the bigger sex. Up close the sexes are easy to tell apart: males have a large, dark red fleshy comb and brown eyes, while females have no comb and deep red eyes. Adults are black with a white ruff at the base of the neck and wide white patches on the upper wings, which flash when the bird banks. Young condors are olive brown with a dark head and take about six years to reach full adult colors.

The Andean condor lives along the Andes, from Colombia and Ecuador in the north to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Chile and Argentina. It needs open country, where it can spot carcasses from the air and find the rising air it depends on: high grasslands known as páramo and puna, rocky slopes and valleys, cliffs used for nesting and roosting, and the windy Patagonian steppe. It also comes down to the dry Pacific coast of Peru and Chile, where sea lion colonies and stranded marine animals provide food, so it ranges from sea level to about 5,000 meters. The species is far more common in the south than in the north. Most birds live in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru, while Ecuador and Colombia have only small populations, many of them helped by reintroduction. In Venezuela, where the condor once lived in the Andes of Mérida, no wild birds are known to remain, and Brazil and Paraguay receive only rare wandering birds.

The Andean condor is a scavenger and feeds almost entirely on carrion. It finds food by soaring at great height and scanning huge areas, relying on keen eyesight rather than smell, and wild birds can travel more than 200 kilometers in a day in search of a meal. Its main food is the carcasses of large mammals: guanacos, deer and llamas and, since the Spanish brought them, cattle, sheep and horses, now a big part of its diet in many places. Along the Pacific coast it feeds on dead sea lions, whales and fish, and it raids seabird colonies for eggs. Now and then it also kills small live animals, such as newborn or sick lambs and rodents, which has earned it a bad reputation among some ranchers. Its bare head stays cleaner when the bird feeds deep inside a carcass, and the skin is easy to clean and dry in the sun. A condor can eat several kilograms of meat at once, so much that it sometimes has trouble taking off, and then go for days without eating.

The Andean condor is one of the most efficient fliers on Earth. Instead of flapping, it rides thermals, the columns of warm air that rise from sunny slopes, and the updrafts created when wind hits a ridge. A study published in 2020 fitted condors in Patagonia with recorders and found that they flapped their wings only about 1% of the time they spent flying, mostly during takeoff. One bird flew for more than five hours and about 172 kilometers without a single wingbeat. Charles Darwin noticed the same thing in 1834, when he watched condors circle over Patagonia for half an hour without once seeing them flap. Because they depend on rising air, condors start flying only once thermals form in the morning and stay grounded on still, cold days. They roost together on high cliff ledges, where groups gather at night and in bad weather. They are not aggressive, but at a carcass there is a clear pecking order: adult males feed first, then females, then young birds.

The Andean condor has one of the slowest reproductive rates of any bird. It does not breed until it is five or six years old, and pairs form lasting bonds, often for life. In courtship the male spreads his wings, puffs up his neck and clicks his tongue. The nest is nothing more than a bare ledge or a small cave on a high cliff, and the female lays a single bluish white egg weighing about 280 grams. Both parents share incubation for 54 to 58 days. The chick is covered in gray down and grows slowly: it takes about six months to fly, and it stays with its parents and depends on them for food until it is around two years old. Because of this long period of care, a pair normally breeds only every second year, and if an egg is lost, the female may lay a replacement. Over a lifetime a pair raises very few young. That is why losing even a few adults to poison or shooting can make a population shrink, and why breeding programs take the first egg so the pair lays a second.

There are only two condors in the world, and both are New World vultures, a family that resembles the vultures of Africa and Asia only because it evolved the same scavenging life. The Andean condor lives in South America, and the California condor in North America, in California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California in Mexico. They look alike at a distance but are easy to tell apart. The Andean condor is slightly heavier and has broader wings, and adults have a white ruff around the neck and, in males, a big fleshy comb. The California condor has no ruff or comb, its bare head is orange pink, and its white wing patches are on the underside of the wings rather than on top. Their stories also differ. In 1987 the last 27 wild California condors were captured for a breeding program, and the species survives thanks to releases and constant monitoring. The Andean condor never fell that low, with thousands still in the southern Andes, but it is declining in the north and is listed as Vulnerable.

The Andean condor has been revered by Andean peoples for thousands of years. In Inca belief it was linked to the upper world, the realm of the sun and the gods, and it appears in pottery, textiles and stone carvings far older than the Incas. Today it is the national bird of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, and it stands at the top of the coats of arms of all four countries. In Argentina it has no official status, but it is the emblem of Quebrada del Condorito National Park in Córdoba. Peru honors it with "El Cóndor Pasa," a 1913 zarzuela by Daniel Alomía Robles whose melody became famous around the world and was declared part of the nation's cultural heritage in 2004. The condor also appears in the Yawar Fiesta of some southern Peruvian communities, where a captured condor is tied to the back of a bull as a symbol of the Andean world against the Spanish one. The bird is usually released afterward, but conservationists criticize the custom.

The Andean condor is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, after years as Near Threatened. The greatest threat is poison. Some ranchers still leave poisoned carcasses to kill pumas and foxes, and condors that feed on them die too, sometimes dozens at a time. Lead from bullets and shot left in hunted animals causes slow poisoning, and power lines and persecution by people who wrongly blame condors for killing livestock add to the losses. With a single chick every two years, even a small rise in adult deaths can push a population into decline. The north is worst off: Ecuador's national census counted 93 birds in 2015 and about 150 in 2018, the species is critically endangered there and in Colombia, and Venezuela has no known wild condors. Captive bred condors were first released in 1989 in Colombia, and Argentina's Andean Condor Conservation Program has released more than 200 birds, raising chicks with condor shaped puppets so they do not get used to people.