Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
California Condor
Eben McMillan
15 June 1964
The other, must have been within 100 feet of the fellow,
Porter, who took the picture, for even with a 6 or 7 inch
lens and enlarging in printing it was still - good print.
In describing the birds to us Ranger Ed. Morse said they could
not have had wingspreads of over six feet. He said they
were not big birds. The adult bird in the photograph we
were discussing Morse said could not have had a wingspread
of over six feet. This being the case he established
both birds to be immature - The only strange aspect of
these two Condor was that their heads were red and the
head of a young bird was supposed to be orange. It was here
that Ranger Morse stated that this proved that the
Doctor (meaning Dr. Alden H. Miller) was wrong in stating
Correcting him about small Condor for those were small
Condor and not in any way large like the 10 foot span
of the wings of large Condor he has seen. Mr. Morse stated
that he was well prepared to estimate distances in the
air by working with timber, having to estimate the
cheight of trees, this, he thought, has prepared him whereby
no one could tell him about distance estimates. "This
is one situation where the Doctor was out of place. This
is a case where the Doctor was the layman and I was
the expert," stated Ranger Morse. Morse thought this was
a case where Dr. Miller talked out of turn. "It just goes
to show that the experts like the Doctor can be wrong to," he
said.
In the process of our being enlightened by Ranger—