A Record Year for Condor Chicks in Central California, 2024

Condors 913 and 889 at their nest in Pinnacles National Park — one of three pairs, or trios, raising chicks in the park in 2024. NPS / Gavin Emmons

California condors, with wingspans of nearly 10 feet, came close to extinction in the 1980s. They nest in caves on cliffs, and sometimes in big hollows in redwoods — and the volcanic rock towers of Pinnacles National Park make excellent nest sites. The park is home to a flock of 98 condors, managed together with the Ventana Wildlife Society, one of three sub-populations in California.

2024 was a great year: central California's flock had a record number of wild-born chicks.

Nine nestlings

By September there were nine nestlings, three of them in nests inside the park. That matters because condors breed very slowly:

• a pair usually raises one chick every two years;
• chicks fledge at six months;
• young condors then stay with their parents for up to a year.

That long, intensive parenting is a big reason condor numbers fall so easily.

The two-egg nest

Condors usually live in pairs, but some form trios — two males and a female, or two females and a male — and normally care for a single egg. This year, biologists found a Pinnacles nest with two eggs: its trio, one male and two females, had evidently each female lay one.

Condor 913, one of the trio, seen through a spotting scope, with both eggs in the nest cavity. NPS / Kaitlin Lopez

A couple of weeks after they were laid, one egg was found crushed, cause unknown. The trio hatched the other, and all three adults take turns visiting the nest to feed and preen their chick, a male, expected to fledge in November. If the other eight fledge by then too, central California's population will be well over 100 birds.

More: California condors at Pinnacles, and the Ventana Wildlife Society's condor biographies.

Sources

Based on "2024 a Banner Year for Condors Nesting in Central California," by Emma Elsner, Conservation Fellow at Pinnacles National Park, Bay Area Nature & Science Blog, National Park Service, September 2024; a work of the United States government in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words.