The California Condor 



We hastened back for our photographic gear, which had been left 

 a hundred yards behind, and prepared to ascend to the Vulture's nest with 

 Graflex set. Fortunately, the ascent was not difficult, and a projecting 

 shoulder which bore an oak tree some fifteen feet below the nest-hole 

 afforded a vantage ground for photography. When all set, and geared 

 up to about 1/500 (of a second), I said to Kelly, "When you are ready, you 

 may fire." Whereupon he let loose a torrent of catcalls. An anxious head 

 instantly appeared, and I, instead of Kelly, "fired." Again, I "got" her, 

 head and shoulders out, but the bird was loth to come forth, and retreated 

 ever and again. Finally, after a bit of a struggle, she pitched out, and 

 I noted that in the act of emerging she quite filled the entrance way. 

 It was an actual squeeze for her to get in and out of that nest. I blazed 

 away, of course, but the range was too close for the light — and the plate. 

 [Indeed, the writer will have to confess right here that on account of a 

 lot of deteriorated plates, the photographic result of the Condor expedi- 

 tion was a fizzle. Fortunately, the superb work done by Messrs. Finley 

 and Bohlman in the Sierra Madre Mountains leaves nothing to be done 

 or desired. Our bird lighted not over sixty feet away, but she sat in the 

 shade where I could do nothing with her. Hark to the note of the dis- 

 appointed professional. She was adorable, of course. Of that anon. 

 But why should we want to do anything to birds or with them?] 



Kelly now addressed himself to an examination of the nest, which 

 could be best reached by a circuitous course from above; but while he 

 was busy aloft with the tackle I heard an ominous sound, something 

 between a hiss and a squall, proceeding from the depths of the rock. 

 "Too late!" I shouted. It was even so; for a squab of Gymnogyps, instead 

 of a white egg, occupied the cave. I examined the situation a few minutes 

 later. The aperture of the nesting cave was midway of the face of a 

 sloping stretch of sandstone, not too steep, perhaps, for inspection with- 

 out the aid of a rope, but too steep for comfortable work. The entrance 

 was just twelve inches high in the clear and nineteen inches wide; but the 

 struggles of the emerging birds had broken out fragments of the thin 

 wall on each side, so that three inches of this total width was plainly 

 "artificial." This opening gave access to a lens-shaped cavity some six 

 feet in horizontal depth by ten in length and two or two and a half feet 

 high in the clear. The floor was of fine dry sand several inches in depth, 

 and upon this at the remotest distance a baby Condor hissed and roared. 

 The infant was perhaps four times as large as the egg from which he had 

 emerged, and since he held his head up well, we judged that he might 

 have been ten days or perhaps two weeks old. He was clad in a downy 

 jacket of sordid white, and his bill and forehead were of a yellowish 

 flesh-color. The place was somewhat odoriferous, but not excessively so, 



1724 



