An Andean condor once soared 171 kilometres without a single wingbeat
Condors lack the large breastbone needed to anchor big flight muscles, so they flap only to take off, then ride rising air from one thermal to the next. One Andean condor held that effortless glide for 171 kilometres over more than five hours, and a bird may manage an hour on a single flap.
The name comes from kuntur, the Quechua word for the Andean condor. Two species survive: the Andean condor of South America's western mountains, and the California condor, now confined to coastal ranges of the western United States, northern Arizona and parts of Mexico. No land bird that flies in the Americas is bigger. The Andean is slightly shorter but heavier, with a wingspan of 2.7 to 3.1 metres; among living flying birds only the wandering albatross has a broader reach.
Although they look like the vultures of Africa and Asia, condors belong to a different family. The resemblance is convergent evolution: two lineages from separate ancestors arrived at the same scavenging design. Their bare heads are a hygiene trick, leaving skin exposed to the drying, sterilising effect of high-altitude sunlight, and that skin can flush with the bird's mood. Their feet are built for walking, like a stork's, rather than for gripping prey, and unusually for birds of prey, males are bigger than females.
Condors are slow to reproduce. They mature at five or six, pair for life and raise one chick at a time, laying an egg only every year to year and a half. The young fly at six months but stay with their parents until about two. Wild birds cover up to 250 kilometres a day looking for carcasses such as deer or cattle, often following smaller scavengers that cannot tear the tough hides, and may fast for days before gorging. Some live 50 years or more.
The IUCN lists the Andean condor as vulnerable and the California condor as critically endangered. Andean birds are shot or poisoned by people who wrongly link them to cattle deaths, while California condors have been devastated by lead from bullets in the carcasses they eat. Every wild California condor today descends from 22 birds bred in captivity.
Source: Condor
