Condor Pairs Produce Eggs in S. D., L. A.

One day after a California condor pair surprised Los Angeles Zoo officials by producing an egg, a pair at the San Diego Wild Animal Park presented its own egg Tuesday--the third to be laid in captivity.

The two birds--named UN1 and AC4--are the same Wild Animal Park pair that produced the female chick Molloko from the first egg laid in captivity last March.

The two pairs are part of a captive-breeding program begun in 1980 to try to replenish the endangered species for release into the wild sometime in the early 1990s, said Lora LaMarca, public information director for the Los Angeles Zoo.

There are 28 California condors in captivity, evenly divided between the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park. No birds are known to remain in the wild.

Fertility Question Remains

Officials at the San Diego Wild Animal Park will determine in the next four to 10 days whether the eggs are fertile. The egg laid in Los Angeles and transferred to San Diego is 3 1/2 inches from tip to tip, white with a very faint blue-green tint and weighs 8.5 ounces, said Tom Hanscom, spokesman for the Wild Animal Park.

“We’ve had--in hand--18 eggs and this one is on the small side, but we’ve seen healthy birds hatch from smaller eggs,” he said, adding that, if the egg is fertile, it will take 57 to 60 days to hatch.

Zoo officials don’t know whether the new chick from the Los Angeles egg, if hatched, will remain in San Diego.

“We switch birds and pair them up for 101 different reasons, so I don’t know whether it will stay in San Diego,” LaMarca said. The egg was transferred to San Diego because the Los Angeles Zoo is putting in new incubation facilities.

The two eggs were taken from the birds in a procedure called “double-clutch,” with the hope that they will produce another one to replace the one taken, as others have done in the wild.

‘Genetic Bottleneck’

“What we have here is a genetic bottleneck; every animal is critical,” LaMarca said. “We want to produce more. Sometimes they can; it’s not guaranteed. They could produce up to three eggs. It doesn’t always happen, but it can.”

Just after the second egg was laid at the Wild Animal Park about 3:45 p.m., the two parents began to fight, said Hanscom. The male, AC4, lunged at the egg, striking it with his beak, but observers were able to remove the egg and take it to an incubation facility where, after inspection, they found no sign of damage, he said.

“Every year we’re asked, ‘Why did you take (the egg) away?’ ” Hanscom said. “We remove it in the hopes that parents will lay a replacement; we’re also hesitant of leaving the egg with untried parents.”

On Monday, Los Angeles Zoo officials discovered that one of their captive pairs of California condors--Cuyama and Cachuma--had produced an egg, and zoo officials Tuesday quickly shipped it to the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Sometime before 6 a.m. Monday, Cachuma produced the egg, surprising zoo officials.

Parents Fairly Young

“The birds (Cuyama and Cachuma) are still relatively young, about 6 years old, and they’re just reaching sexual maturity,” LaMarca said. For that reason, there is a chance the egg may not be fertile.

“The birds haven’t been old enough in the past to reproduce,” said Dr. Cathleen Cox, director of research at the Los Angeles Zoo. “They just turned 6 this year. There are only three pairs mature enough to be productive, and one of those pairs was brought in from the wild. It also takes longer to form a pair bond with someone you haven’t been familiar with.”

Nevertheless, Cox said, zoo officials are optimistic that the birds will begin to reproduce more rapidly.

“It looks very interesting. Seven males are giving courtship displays this season. There’s even a 4-year-old. Boy, is he eager. But our hope is (Cuyama and Cachuma) will recycle. Today (Cuyama) did another courtship display. It looks very good.”

In the wild, California condors produce and raise, on the average, one chick every two years. “That’s another reason they became endangered,” LaMarca said. “Statistically, you could almost predict when they would be extinct.”

There are a number of problems that have slowed reproduction of the condors, Hanscom said.

Key Factors Are Unknown

“The biggest problem was that we did not know whether they would perform in captivity. We never know what factors are necessary to induce natural behavior. They are placed in a compound away from public exhibit and fed according to . . . what they would encounter in the wild, but we don’t know . . . what factors might prevent them from breeding.

“We also don’t know how they bond. All of the factors might be correct, but the chemistry isn’t there. The biggest difficulty has been the unknowns.”

There has been continued courtship between UN1 and AC4, along with an immature pair, about 6 years old, at the Wild Animal Park.

“We were encouraged by the activity we saw, . . . but we did not believe a condor would produce an egg until 7, so we won’t be tremendously surprised if the egg produced out of Los Angeles is infertile,” Hanscom said.

Just hours before the discovery of the egg, Hanscom was saying that UN1 and AC4 had been courting and copulating throughout January and February, and the female had been “giving every indication in the last few days that she is about to lay an egg as well.”

Being Pushed From Land

The California condor is a dark reddish-brown and is characterized by a curved beak and an average wingspan of 9 feet. Biologists have said that they nearly became extinct by contracting lead poisoning from the shot in carcasses, which the scavengers sometimes eat.

Hanscom said the diminished number of California condors has been caused by the expanding human population squeezing the condor range into an increasingly smaller habitat.

“In addition,” Hanscom said, “we have seen a disruption of nesting and roosting by mining, lumbering and other forestry activity in the condor range. We also certainly attribute the decline to poisoning factors. Four dead condors brought in from the wild that we have been able to perform necropsies on showed that one died of cyanide poisoning. The other three died of lead poisoning.”

No condors have been released in the captive-breeding program, LaMarca said, but six Andean condors have been released in the California condor range in the Los Padres National Forest to pre-test the environment in the area.