California Condor — Emily

Imagine you are climbing on a mountain with many small caves. All of a sudden you see a huge shadow almost bigger than you. No need to panic, it is just a California Condor coming home from a very long day of looking for food.You may even be standing in front of his cave, but he will never hurt you, for he is more scared of you than you are of him.

Names
The California Condor has about three names it can be called.The most common name is obviously the California Condor. This bird has a very strange scientific name and it is Gymnogysp californianus. In the word gymnogyps gymno means naked and gyps means vulture. the last name that this bird could be called is a scavenger because it looks for carcasses of dead animals and that is what it eats. No mater what you call it by it is still the California Condor.

Description
The California Condor is an big animal. It has a bald head and neck with a small hole on each side of its head which is their ear. They have a body with black, grey, and sometimes white feathers. They can weigh up to 30 pounds and when full grown can have a wing span of 10 feet! When soaring they can get up to 55 mph and will fly 150 miles just to find one meal. Surprisingly this big fierce looking bird spends most of its time cleaning itself when it is not looking for food.Just like most other birds the California condor mattes in the fall but what is different about this bird is that they only make one egg every two years. When a baby California Condor hatches its feathers are wet so it looks like it has no feathers at all but in a few hours it will have fluffy white feathers. when the baby is about 1 or half a year old there feathers getcompletely black even their heads are sometimes black but when they get older they will be a light black.

Habitat
The California Condor does not have many needs. For food all it needs is dead carcasses that has not begun to rot just yet. It is surprising that this big bird does not kill for its food.It will only kill mice, rats or small birds,when can not find any thing dead to eat but not normally. In the wild it would live in small caves, mountains, and cliffs or other rocky places. For such a big bird the California condor does not ask for very much from nature.

Range and Population
The California Condor lives in very specific places. It only lives in the USA,normally in the western US. Sometimes you will find them in Florida,but mostly in California, Nevada, and Utah. For the population in 2007, there were only 27 California Condors. In 2011, there were 394 of them. Even if the population is small now, hopefully it will get bigger soon.

Threats
There are very few reasons why the California Condor is endangered, but they are not ones that we can easily solve.The biggest threat is that in the wild, they only make one egg every two years! Because of their slow reproduction, many California Condors are related to one another and they are not able to breed. One other threat is that people steal their eggs. Hunting is also a problem because they are scavengers. When a hunter shoots animal and does not go to get it, a California Condor will find it, then they will eat the animal bullet and that will kill them. Sadly, being a big animal does not help them from threats.

Solutions
Many of the threats to the California Condors cannot be helped, but there are a few we can try to solve. People can continue to help them reproduce more than they would in the wild with captive breeding. We can also make sure that when people hunt, they should always try very hard to find the animal they shot before a California Condor finds it. Sadly, there is not much else that we can do to help.All we can do is hope that in the next 10 years or so the California Condor will be off the Endangered species list for good!

Works Cited
Arnold, Caroline. On the Brink of Extinction the California Condor . San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich , 1993. Print.
Benson, Sonia. “The California Condor .” Endangered Species . 2nd ed. Print.
“California Condor .” Defenders of Wildlife. http://www.defenders.org/‌wildlife_and_habitat/‌wildlife/‌california_condor.php, n.d. Web. 3 Feb. 2012. .
“California Condor Gymnogyps californianus.” National Geographic. National Geographic, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2011. .
Hildyard, Anne. “ Condor .” Wildlife and plants. Third edition ed. 2007. Print.

February 8, 2012

To the Editor:

Did you know the California condor is an endangered species? We must help them because they are very important to the food chain. If we do not help them now, soon there will be no more of them left.
The California condor is so important to the food chain because when an animal dies, a condor goes and finds it, even if it is very far away. Without them, there would be many dead animals everywhere that could spread diseases to other animals and even humans. They are one of the few animals that are scavengers, and scavengers are a huge part of the food chain, since they keep the dead animals in check.
Hunting is also a big problem, but not because people are killing them. When a hunter kills an animal but does not go to get it and bring it home, a California condor will almost immediately find it. When the condor eats the animal, it also eats the bullet in the animal. The bullet will poison the condor or sometimes even kill it.
If we do not assist the California condor soon, there will be no more left. At this time there are only four hundred left in the world. If we don’t act now, it will be too late to save them.
Not many of their threats can be prevented by people, but we can help by always bringing home animals that we shoot. We can also continue captive breeding because they only make one egg every two years! Sadly that is all we can really do.
Thank you for your time and I hope you will consider helping the California Condor a strong and helpful creature.

Sincerely,

A concerned student
at Leverett Elementary School
Emily