Condors Take a Shine to Mountain Hamlet

Les Reid was working on his computer when he heard a racket. He stepped into his bedroom and was stunned to find eight California condors ripping up the place.

“One was up on the bed going through the blankets,” said Reid, 84, a former member of the Sierra Club’s national board of directors. “I looked at the door to the deck, and the screen was all torn up.

“I was shocked, obviously, but mostly I was upset because I didn’t have my camera loaded.”

There are only 29 free-flying California condors in the state, and about half of them have suddenly invaded this mountain town nestled amid the pines west of the Grapevine.

Since early this month, up to 15 immature condors have torn out insulation, wrecked chimney tops, destroyed patio furniture and ripped up trash bags in the hamlet, a private Kern County mountain resort in the San Emigdio Mountains.

Federal biologists who track the endangered birds are taking a gentle approach to dealing with the worrisome behavior by yelling, waving and tossing pine cones at the birds to get them away from residences. Their goal is to make contact with humans unpleasant.

Marc Weitzel, a project leader in the federal Condor Recovery Program, said the birds have always been curious. Guzzling antifreeze, landing on power lines, eating toxic materials all contributed to the bird’s near extinction, he said.

“We wish they were more fearful,” Weitzel said. “We just don’t know what goes on in a condor’s mind.”

Pine Mountain Club sits in the middle of the condor’s historic range and is surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest. Condors have briefly haunted other mountain towns, but never so many at one time, biologists said.

The birds once covered most of North America, but their range diminished to the mountains of Kern, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties as they dwindled in numbers.

The last of the original wild California condors were taken into captivity in 1987 when the population dropped to 27.

The birds that are now in Pine Mountain Club were all born in either the Los Angeles or San Diego zoos and later released. They are 18 months to 6 years old and have not reached sexual maturity.

Biologists say human-bird contact was bound to happen as the condors, the largest birds in North America, reclaimed their turf.

“My wife and I fought them bringing the last adult condors in [to captivity], and it’s proving we were right,” said Reid, who has lived in the area since retiring in 1981. “Without adults in the wild, there’s no way that these youngsters can learn how to behave.

“It’s very nice to see them soar on the thermals, but they’re not really wild. [Authorities] ended up raising a bunch of great big friendly barnyard chicks, not wild, free-roaming birds.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists say the birds are fairly wild, but they agree that they have suffered for lack of parental guidance. In nearby condor preserves and in the forest, biologists lay out animal carcasses for the condors under cover of darkness. In the zoos, workers used puppets in raising the chicks to avoid human imprinting.

Weitzel said that state officials can capture condors who spend too much time around humans but that it’s a last resort. Biologists are asking homeowners to avoid feeding the birds.

There are now 162 California condors--the 29 free in California, 20 free in the Grand Canyon area and the rest in captivity.

Scott Rosen, who manages an Internet company from his Pine Mountain Club home, has seen the birds sitting outside his window on the deck looking in.

“If there is any doubt that birds evolved from dinosaurs, just look at the condor,” Rosen said. “They’re positively prehistoric close up even though they are beautiful when they fly.”

Neighbor Alex Fields said his young children have played on the deck with condors sitting on the rail. The birds seem gentle, almost friendly, he said.

“But they poop a lot,” Fields said. “We had nine of them out on the deck one day, and the whole deck rail looked like it had been whitewashed. We had to blast it off of there.”