California Condor Eben McMillan 22 August 1963 It remained cool and windy throughout the night. Fog showed along the range to the south of the Antelope Valley. The heavy prevailing west winds here must be somewhat of a barrier to large soaring birds for I have not seen buzzards or Eagles out in the center of the Antelope valley. Shepherds in the Tehachapi Valley reported not having seen any condor in that area. I saw 25 plus buzzards and many raven in a stubble field east of the Tehachapi city dump where the carcass of a sheep was that had died five days before. Most of the meat was gone from the bones of this carcass that showed having been dragged about by many scavengers. At lunchtime I watched Turkey buzzards passing but to the west from the eastern section of Tehachapi Valley. A strong west wind was blowing. It was moderately cool. The buzzards seemed capable of moving along into this stiff west wind at a pace of approximately ten to 15 miles per hour. They held an altitude of about seven or eight hundred feet above the valley floor but remained in the westerly wind current en route for one could tell from the way they were buffeted about when trying to move crosswise to the wind current that it was quite strong. Their progress seemed quite steady in the face of this wind. They held a straight course up the center of the valley. No buzzards were seen moving westward along the sides of the valley with the exception of three buzzards that were progressing westward, very close to the ground, along the foothills on the south side of Tehachapi Valley. These three birds were making slow progress westward. Their flight was very erratic being within three or four feet of the ground one moment, then fifty or sixty feet high the next. After gaining a mile or so of westward progress these three buzzards floated back eastward on the wind and after arriving in the lower part of