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Post by oldcyansilverback on Jan 16, 2023 6:38:00 GMT -5
 COMMON NAME: Andean Condor SCIENTIFIC NAME: Vultur gryphus TYPE: Birds DIET: Carnivore SIZE: Body: 4 feet; wingspan: up to 10.5 feet WEIGHT: Up to 33 pounds SIZE RELATIVE TO A 6-FT MAN:  ABOUT THE ANDEAN CONDORAndean condors are massive birds, among the largest in the world that are able to fly. Because they are so heavy (up to 33 pounds), even their enormous 10-foot wingspan needs some help to keep them aloft. For that reason, these birds prefer to live in windy areas where they can glide on air currents with little effort. Andean condors are found in mountainous regions, as their name suggests, but also live near coasts replete with ocean breezes and even deserts that feature strong thermal air currents. CharacteristicsThese condors are mostly black, but males have a distinctive white “collar” around their necks and some white markings on their wings as well. Like their relatives, the California condors, Andean condors have bald heads. Scavenging and DietCondors are vultures, so they keep their sharp eyes peeled for the carrion that makes up most of their diet. They prefer to feast on large animals, wild or domestic, and in picking the carcasses, they perform an important function as a natural clean-up crew. Along the coasts, condors will feed on dead marine animals like seals or fish. These birds do not have sharp predator's claws, but they will raid birds' nests for eggs or even young hatchlings.
Breeding and PopulationThese long-lived birds have survived over 75 years in captivity, but they reproduce slowly. A mating pair produces only a single offspring every other year, and both parents must care for their young for a full year. The Andean condor is considered threatened but is in far better shape than its California cousin. Reintroduction programs are working to grow populations of these South American birds. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/a/andean-condor/ |
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 16, 2023 18:06:38 GMT -5
Definitely my favorite bird. Its wing-span is even longer than gorilla's arm-span.
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 16, 2023 18:17:08 GMT -5
 Pictures of wild Andean condors. (a) male and (b) female adult wild Andean condors showing similar orange tongue colour and different iris colour. (c) A dominant adult male Andean condor is identified by its characteristic yellow neck (enlarged picture) in a typical mix of condors and American black vultures (white arrows) gathered around a carcass. (d) A subadult male condor can be identified on the right (yellow arrow) by its less intense but still conspicuous yellow colour in the neck. Photos, a: U. Mellone, b: G. Ignazi, and c-d: V. Cailly Arnulphi. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065562.g001 www.researchgate.net/figure/Pictures-of-wild-Andean-condors-a-male-and-b-female-adult-wild-Andean-condors_fig1_240307054 |
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Jan 17, 2023 5:51:06 GMT -5
/\ Glad you like this bird. It is the largest bird in the new world and South America.
Only the pelican and wandering albastross has wingspans longer than this bird.
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Jan 17, 2023 5:53:24 GMT -5
This video might look real but it is not as golden eagles do not live in South America.
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 17, 2023 12:14:58 GMT -5
WCS PERU
ANDEAN CONDOR
The Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) has an important ecological role as a scavenger. By quickening the decomposition rate of dead animals, thus diminishing the risk of disease associated with the slow rotting of cadavers. It also has evolutionarily importance due to its sense of smell, unique in its genus and unusual in the bird kingdom. It has a long lifespan, comparable to humans, with up to 50 years in the wild, and up to 80 years in captivity. It is around 142 cm tall and its wingspan can reach 330 cm. Its distribution range spreads through the Andean countries of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, from the north of Colombia to the extreme south of the Chilean and Argentine Patagonia. Since ancient times, the Andean condor has been an important part of the Andean mythology and traditions. For example, the Incas considered it the immortal representation of the Jananpacha: the upper world, sky, and future.
Various threats face the Andean condor. As a bird with natural small populations, a wide distribution range and low reproductive rates, the viability of its populations are a true concern. Its sporadic attacks on livestock have contributed to its poor public image, and, as a consequence, there have been illegal carcass poisoning events. The practice of strapping the bird to bulls in bull-fights during the Yawar Fiesta, and climate change only exacerbate their already vulnerable situation.
The Andean condor lives in the entire Andean region, which allows us to use our strategic position in each member country to develop regional initiatives. We work to establish a baseline to understand its historic and actual threats, and to identify the gaps in the information necessary for its conservation which will allow a prioritization of high quality research initiatives. In Peru, in addition to providing technical support to the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation in its conservation initiatives, we have also been analyzing data to create a preliminary map of condor distribution in Peru and Bolivia, based on observations entered on Cornell University Lab of Ornithology’s eBird platform and reported in interviews held by WCS staff. This map will allow us to identify condor habitats that superpose with communities, extractive activities, infrastructure, protected areas, and other land uses, as well as with different threats and actors that need to be taken account of in the creation of a national plan of action for the conservation of this majestic bird.
10 facts about the Andean condor:
Its name in quechua is kuntur and the Incas believed it was immortal-- it represented the Jananpacha, the upper world of the sky and future.
The distance between the points of its spread wings (~3.3 meters) represents the largest wingspan of any terrestrial bird.
The Andean condor is part of four national shields, where it represents different values: Bolivia (boundaryless pursuit), Chile (strength), Colombia (liberty and order), and Ecuador (power, grandeur, and valeur).
This bird is monogamous and both parents incubate the egg. Its chicks stay with its parents up to 2 years before facing the world alone.
In certain seasons of the year (October in Peru), the Andean condor flies from the peaks of the Andes to the Pacific coast to eat sea lion carcasses and discarded placentas.
It’s one of the only predators that can break the hard guanaco skin with its beak alone.
Andean condors mature sexually late in life (a minimum of 5 years, with reports of the first chick at 11 years), and they only have one chick every 2-3 years. This makes them very vulnerable to threats due to low recovery rates.
They form part of the family Cathartidae, which comes from the Greek word kathartes meaning “he who cleans.”
Andean condors are thermal soarers, which means that they rise with the air current, helping them spot carcasses from great heights and descend upon them without wasting much energy.
The Andean condor displays sexual dimorphism-- this is when animals of the same species have different body forms based on biological sex. The male Andean condor has a white collar and a crest, while the female Andean condor does not.
peru.wcs.org/en-us/wildlife/andean-condor.aspx?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxsPCz4zP_AIVmhXUAR05DAV2EAAYASAAEgI_kvD_BwE
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 17, 2023 19:18:52 GMT -5
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Jan 17, 2023 21:17:41 GMT -5
/\ What type of problems? Maybe in the air where smaller birds use manuverability to harrass larger birds. It does not make sense to say the smaller vultures can chase off condors in flocks as condors also come in flocks.
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Jan 17, 2023 21:19:26 GMT -5
General information: Andean Condors live in groups of three or more consisting of an equal number of males, and related females and their offspring. In the wild, hunting is usually done by scavenging, feeding in groups. Vultur gryphus is the only bird species in which social feeding is routine. Condors are very finicky eaters. They don't rush into their meals all at once. In the wild, Condors have been known to wait as long as five days before eating a meal, even when it`s set right in front of them. In captivity, in order to preserve the Condors' nutritional health the birds are always fed by the same keeper. www.whozoo.org/Intro2000/lestjeff/tempagetwo.htm |
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 24, 2023 19:02:43 GMT -5
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Jan 25, 2023 2:52:32 GMT -5
/\That is one huge condor. I think we should make a thread about bird cultural importance in human society.
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 25, 2023 19:28:36 GMT -5
oldcyansilverback Condors Drive Cougars to Kill More
According to a study Elbroch co-authored and which was published earlier this month in the journal PLoS One, the cougars abandon their kills due to harassment from Andean condors, a near-threatened scavenging bird, Elbroch told OurAmazingPlanet. This came as a surprise, however, since the condors are physically much smaller than these mountain lions, and don't directly threaten the big cats, he said.
"Mountain lions under the pressure of condors act like squirrels do under the pressure of owls," acting more skittish, Elbroch said.
www.livescience.com/26048-condors-make-pumas-kill-more.html
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Jan 25, 2023 19:40:48 GMT -5
/\ Thanks for posting that. A few condors have can drive away a female cougar at least from the looks of it. My cousin told me he saw a few Lappet faced vultures chasing off a leopard in NGO but I have yet to find it  . One thing to point out, cougars in South American are smaller than these in North America. Cougars in Central America are the smallest. |
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 26, 2023 6:52:10 GMT -5
Nuisance Ecology: Do Scavenging Condors Exact Foraging Costs on Pumas in Patagonia?
Abstract and Figures
Predation risk describes the energetic cost an animal suffers when making a trade off between maximizing energy intake and minimizing threats to its survival. We tested whether Andean condors (Vultur gryphus) influenced the foraging behaviors of a top predator in Patagonia, the puma (Puma concolor), in ways comparable to direct risks of predation for prey to address three questions: 1) Do condors exact a foraging cost on pumas?; 2) If so, do pumas exhibit behaviors indicative of these risks?; and 3) Do pumas display predictable behaviors associated with prey species foraging in risky environments? Using GPS location data, we located 433 kill sites of 9 pumas and quantified their kill rates. Based upon time pumas spent at a carcass, we quantified handling time. Pumas abandoned >10% of edible meat at 133 of 266 large carcasses after a single night, and did so most often in open grasslands where their carcasses were easily detected by condors. Our data suggested that condors exacted foraging costs on pumas by significantly decreasing puma handling times at carcasses, and that pumas increased their kill rates by 50% relative to those reported for North America to compensate for these losses. Finally, we determined that the relative risks of detection and associated harassment by condors, rather than prey densities, explained puma "giving up times" (GUTs) across structurally variable risk classes in the study area, and that, like many prey species, pumas disproportionately hunted in high-risk, high-resource reward areas.
www.researchgate.net/publication/234090693_Nuisance_Ecology_Do_Scavenging_Condors_Exact_Foraging_Costs_on_Pumas_in_Patagonia
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 3, 2023 6:44:28 GMT -5
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Feb 3, 2023 7:56:55 GMT -5
/\ Must be an easy meal for the condor. Albastross do not really fight to defend their nest. They don’t even defend their nest and chicks from rats.
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 4, 2023 10:59:40 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 13, 2023 10:31:27 GMT -5
Is the Andean Condor Capable of Killing Live Animals?
Subsistence farmers recognize that the condor eats dead animals and recognize that the Andean Condor is capable of killing live animals. Stories about condors attacking animals go from one or several condors that pluck the eyes of a calf, disembowel a newborn, or take the adult cattle to a precipice to make them fall and kill them. Some of these details seem exaggerated but in essence, it is widely accepted that the Condor is capable of killing live animals. Additionally, many of the Andean farmers claim to have witnessed these acts, which give an idea of the magnitude of the problem.
There are also accounts of the Andean Condor attacking and killing newborn sea lions in the breeding colonies of South American Sea Lions (Otaria flavescens) on the Peruvian coast.
avianreport.com/andean-condor-capable-of-killing-live-animals/
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 22, 2023 11:26:52 GMT -5
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Post by oldcyansilverback on Mar 19, 2023 5:17:50 GMT -5
one thing about this bird, it will dominate over most vultures. It is slightly heavier than the Eurasian black vulture at max weights.
Californian condors have been killed by golden eagles in flight but have successfully defended their nests from these birds.
An andean condor being larger and more powerful than a Californian condor should be able to chase off a golden eagle more often than not.
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