California condor survey field notes, v1477
Page 139
Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. | www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
California Condor Eben McMillan 3 February 1964 under its wings. Its head was thin, small, and black except for a short ring of about two inches at the base of its neck where the bare head emerges from the neck feathers. When this immature condor left our camp area it returned and landed on ground by other condors, and Ravens, that were feeding on the lower sheep carcass. The lower sheep carcass on which the condors had fed had been dragged downhill about 100 feet. The less remained of this sheep carcass the farther it continued to be dragged, and the more the condors fought over it. A Golden Eagle came and dove at two condors that were hovering in the air about twenty feet above the sheep carcass. Those dives were rather slow and did not seem to concern the condor much. At 11:00 A.M. we left our camp in the pickup and drove to the top of the ridge above where the lower sheep carcass had been left. We had observed condor leaving the area of the sheep carcass as we were breaking camp and assumed all the birds had flown above Hopper mountain, or gone out of sight northward. Stopping the pickup on the brow of the ridge we walked down to look over the brow of the hill to where the sheep carcass had been dragged in order that we might inspect what was left of the sheep carcass. Looking over the brow of this ridge we saw three adult and the imm. Bingham-headed condor standing around the remains of this carcass which was now about sixty feet below where we stood. The condors saw us as we looked over the brow of the ridge but remained about the carcass for about two minutes before they leisurely flew up into the air and circled above us for two or three minutes before going -