Historic Condor Chick Enters World Without Any Help From Friends

Honsi, an apparently energetic condor chick, has made history as the first California condor born in captivity without human help.

San Diego Wild Animal Park officials were slow to announce the new addition, which arrived early Thursday morning, and Los Angeles Zoo officials took the spotlight Friday by announcing their own condor chick birth--the first in the zoo’s captive-breeding program history.

The two new chicks bring the total population of the endangered bird to 35, all of them in captivity in an attempt to save the species from extinction.

The 6-ounce chick born at the Wild Animal Park near Escondido, first pipped, or cracked, its shell at the condor nursery about 9 p.m. Monday, and park officials scheduled a watch for 9 p.m. Thursday--the normal 72-hour period after which human help is needed to assist the young bird in escaping its shell.

But Honsi, which means “spirit” in Maidu Indian dialect, emerged at 12:30 a.m. Thursday, about 20 hours earlier than expected.

In 19 previous hatchings, Wild Animal Park workers have stepped in and aided each chick in its effort to emerge, out of concern that the final strain could prove fatal.

Joel Edelstein, a Wild Animal Park spokesman, said Honsi was doing well Friday on a menu of minced baby mice. The chick appeared fatigued after its historic feat, Edelstein said, but has recovered nicely.

The sex of the two new arrivals will be determined later through blood tests.

There are four fertile eggs in Wild Animal Park incubators and two at the Los Angeles Zoo, Edelstein said.

Both facilities are preparing for the next phase of the captive-breeding program, in which some of the condors will be released back into the wild, scheduled for 1991.

The program began at the San Diego Zoo in 1983 and escalated in 1987 when 27 condors, believed to be the only ones of the species remaining in the wild, were captured and placed in cages at the two zoos.