Hatching of Condor Egg Eagerly Awaited

Unbridled passions, misplaced love, betrayal, murderous cruelty, the other woman: Nobody ever said courtship was easy, but for California condors in Ventura County’s rugged back country, just hatching an egg is a saga of Shakespearean intensity.

Even so, mom, dad and condor-to-be are said to be doing fine. If all goes well, the incipient chick will be only the second hatched in the wild since the start of the government’s breeding program for the huge, all-but-extinct birds in the mid-1980s. The blessed event is due in mid-April.

Jubilant biologists for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week disclosed their discovery of the pale-blue egg, equal in size to about four hen’s eggs, and the surprising commitment of the parents to hatching it.

“They don’t have any role models,” said Bronwyn Davey, a spokeswoman for the wildlife agency. “We didn’t even know whether they knew enough to nest in caves.”

If the chick thrives, it will send scientists a clear message, Davey said: “It would mean we’d be less likely to do any manipulation in the future. We’d monitor but not interfere. This would give us more confidence that the condors can do these things on their own.”

The egg comes from the union of a female named R8 and a male, W-Zero. But the story really starts before their relationship had matured, a time in a Santa Barbara County condor refuge when W-Zero had a thing going not just with R8 but also a certain female called R11.

As part of the breeding program, the three had been born in captivity and set free in the arid wilderness seven years ago.

Last year, the two females each coupled with W-Zero and laid an egg. But according to scientists, their menage a trois was a disaster for all.

“The three of them shared incubating duties but seemed to be confused about which egg to sit on,” Davey said.

As a result, one egg dried up. The other was snatched by biologists, who substituted a counterfeit the same color and size. The real egg was placed in an incubator at the Los Angeles Zoo and was placed back into the nest shortly before a chick pecked its way out of the shell.

The deception ended in tragedy, though, with the young bird apparently bitten to death by R11.

This year, scientists kept the murderous mom in a holding pen during breeding season.

In the meantime, the two others had winged their way to the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge outside Fillmore. The condors are nesting in a cave on a sandstone cliff.

Watching them for several weeks through telescopes, biologists worried that W-Zero had no interest in putting in time on the egg, a customary duty for male birds.

But on Feb. 18, when one of the scientists rappelled 75 feet down the cliff to grab the egg and replace it with a phony, W-Zero was plopped on the nest. Shaking out his massive wings, he refused to leave.

“He made this deep hissing sound, this kind of defensive grunt,” said Mike Barth, an agency biologist who was peering down the rock face as another scientist hopped into the cave. “It’s real intimidating when they’re in that posture. You don’t want to try to reach in and get the egg.”

Biologists will keep an eye on the nesting couple from afar, Barth said.

The largest birds in North America, condors can have a wingspan of more than 9 feet. By 1982, only 22 California condors were left, prompting the government to collect chicks and eggs for its breeding program.

Today, the condor population includes 64 at wilderness sites in California and Arizona, with an additional 100 in facilities in Los Angeles, San Diego and Boise, Idaho.