Condors at Pinnacles

Volcanoes were one of my favorite subjects in elementary school and Pinnacles National Monument is one of my favorite places currently, partly because Pinnacles is half of an ancient volcano (the other half is somewhere near LA) and partly because this is where I got hooked on rock climbing. But this adventure to Pinnacles with my mom and two brothers John and Steve was to hike to a spot where we could hope to see some California Condors.

Currently there are only 280 California Condors in the world. Of these, 135 are wild and of those, 15 are flying around Pinnacles. Today was a release event open to the public for up to five more juvenile condors but unfortunately they didn't feel like leaving their pen today. Fortunately for us there were several wild condors flying around near the pen.

At first it was hard to tell if we were seeing any condors or not as we looked through our binoculars to the ridge across from the viewing area. With a six foot wing span, Turkey Vultures are big birds and look very similar to a condor. But with a nine foot wingspan for the condor, it was easy to tell what we were looking at when these two birds glided around in circles near each other.