California condor survey field notes, v1476
Page 343
Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. | www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Where the condor dragged the body of this calf that died at birth. Tall grasses and a road bed made this tracking possible—many feathers, both condor and buzzard were piled up at this site, (See specimen No.5). At 10:20 A.M. on August 11, 1963, Mrs. Farnsworth [illegible] that in the process of inspecting her cows, that are now calving, she came upon one condor and 10 plus buzzards gathered about the carcass of a dead calf that she had seen and recorded as a death loss earlier in the morning. One hour later she returned and came upon four adult condor feeding on the carcass of this calf that had been dropped from the cow, Near a large rock about 100 yards above the road and ¼ mile south of the Rock Corral. As she drove up on these condor they were forced to come downhill to get into the air and in the process passed by within 50 feet of Mrs. Farnsworth. These four condor had dragged the remains of this calf from the large rock above, down, and into the roadway. In doing this a distance of one-hundred-yards was covered, downhill, and over a five foot bank on the uphill side of the road, and it was in the [illegible] of this bank when Mrs. Farnsworth arrived on the scene. Later in the evening of the same day Mrs. Farnsworth again saw four adult condor picking the remains of this calf carcass that by then had been lifted up over a 30 inch bank on the downhill side of the roadway and dragged through large rocks and lodged between two large rocks that were located about 10 feet from the bottom of the canyon that runs parallel to, and below, the road. Mrs. Farnsworth found four condor roosting in a large oak, on a ridge to the west, and directly above where the above calf body, its remains, were left.