Condor’s Midwives Await Breakthrough

San Diego’s long-awaited baby California condor has begun preparing to hatch, and the tap-tap-tapping of its beak on the eggshell is expected by Wednesday, officials at the San Diego Wild Animal Park said Monday.

The chick, the first bred in captivity, pushed its beak into the air pocket at the egg’s narrow end at 6 a.m. Sunday, Tom Hanscom, a park spokesman, said. This allows the chick to begin using its lungs in preparation for hatching.

Generally within two to three days of its first breaths, the chick begins trying to “pip,” or peck a small hole in the shell, said Bill Toone, curator of birds.

“It marks the beginning of the work cycle for the chick,” Toone said. “That’s when we start to get real nervous.”

Keepers have mounted a round-the-clock watch on the egg, using a video camera so that they will know exactly when the first pip comes. The chick could die if allowed to stay in the shell too long afterward, Toone said.

“We give a chick three days, 72 hours, before we decide to intercede and help,” Toone said. “That’s the most dramatic

and the most likely scenario because we can’t afford to have any of them become a statistic.”

The baby condor is being watched anxiously because it represents what federal, state and zoo officials see as the best hope for re-establishing a population of California condors in the wild. They hope to breed the birds in captivity and then release them, three at a time, as early as 1993 in three refuges in Southern California.

Only 27 California condors are known to exist, all of them in captivity in San Diego or Los Angeles.

Keepers took the egg out of the nest shortly after it was laid March 3, to try to encourage production of another egg. Condor UN1 and her mate, AC4, have been breeding regularly, but no egg has resulted. But park officials say they won’t give up hope until mid-May.