Has the California condor returned to Mexico? This can be heralded by an egg found in an abandoned eagle nest. The iconic giant of the skies hasn’t had a breeding population for about 75 years. Once on the brink of extinction, the California condor is the largest bird in North America having a wingspan of almost 10 feet.
Dr. Mike Wallace of the Zoological Society of San Diego said,
This is a momentous occasion. We’re all excited.
It was on March 25, Wallace and colleagues found the egg on a cliff in the Sierra San Pedro de Martir National Park. The park is located in the Baja California peninsula’s arid interior, more than 100 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The egg then was found to be 45 to 50 days old.
Wallace said,
We are all sitting on pins and needles waiting to see where the situation is going.
Swooping above the western United States, parts of Canada and Baja California, the California condor was once widespread scavenging dead fish and animals. But, by the 1980s, only 22 California condors were left, with the last documented sighting in Mexico being in the 1930s, according to Wallace.
