First pair of prey-go-neesh in a century are nesting on the North Coast
Cue the California condor chick watch.
The Yurok Tribe announced this week that the two oldest members of the North Coast flock have made it official, setting up a nesting spot in a remote area of an old growth forest.
Known to the tribe as prey-go-neesh, the endangered birds usually mate for life, unless one dies or they are unable to produce young, with the avian parents sharing the care of their blue-hued egg and rearing the chick.
The pair and two others were released four years ago as part of the Yurok-led Northern California Condor Restoration Program, a partnership with Redwood National and State Park, becoming the first condors to fly over the region in more than a century.
But the big unanswered question is whether A0, also known as “Ney-gem’ ‘Ne-chween-kah,” which means “She carries our prayers,” and A1, called “Hlow Hoo-let,” which means “At last I (or we) fly,” have produced an additional milestone for the fledgling reintroduction effort now numbering 24 birds.
While no one has yet to get a peek of the nesting site due to the location, signs — including “a series of behavioral changes and an analysis of flight data” — appear to indicate the two “may have started tending to a newly laid egg in early February,” according to the tribe.
“This is a huge moment for our Northern California flock,” NCCRP Program Manager and Yurok Wildlife Department Senior Biologist Chris West said in the announcement. “It is important to remember that these are wild birds. We trap them occasionally for health monitoring, but if they nest, and how successful they are, is totally up to them, with as little interference from us as possible.”
If A0 has laid an egg — which the tribe says would have been done “within a cavity of an old-growth redwood” selected as a site “after months of searching for the ideal location” — and the timeline is correct, then the two are about halfway through the 55- to 58-day incubation period.
Even if that’s the case, the tribe says, there are no guarantees this first try will be a success. In the wild, the announcement notes, “the initial egg produced by a breeding pair of condors frequently exhibits low survival, due to the adults’ lack of experience with the incubation and care process.”
Still, the NCCRP is “thrilled at the development” — and the wait is on to find out if the North Coast will soon see the first fluttering of tiny prey-go-neesh wings in generations.
“I have been waiting for this moment since the first condors arrived in 2022,” Yurok Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams-Claussen says in the announcement. “As a scientist, I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up too high, but that doesn’t mean I can’t cheer for these young parents’ success.”
According to the tribe, NCCRP staff are closely watching information coming in from the pair’s transmitters and observations being made out in the field.
“Changes in the adult condors’ rates and timing of feeding can be used to determine how the nest is doing, hatching of a chick and various stages of the chick’s development,” the announcement says. “The NCCRP is also currently working through the logistics for potential use of an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone for visual confirmation of the nest.”
Some regular watchers of the Yurok Tribe’s condor cam, which gives a 24-hour view of the protected release site where the birds regularly return from ventures to feed on carrion set out by the NCCRP team, noted the pair had been absent more than usual, leading to speculation a major development might be in the works before the announcement.
The first indications of a shift in dynamics actually began last year when A1 — along with the other two older male members A2 and A3 — began displaying what’s known as the condor courtship dance, partially spreading out their wings with their head down before a female, often rocking back and forth.
But, Williams-Claussen said in an interview that March, there were no other signs that those initial overtures moved forward into something more serious — until now.
Late bloomers in the avian world, condors — which can live until around 50 — don’t reach sexual maturity for six to seven years. A0 and A1 are both 6 years and 10 months.
Often at new release sites like the North Coast program, mating can take a little longer to catch on with no adults around to provide context, West previously told the Journal, until a couple figures out the logistics — as A0 and A1 seem to have done — with the others then following suit.
The next oldest male in the group is A2 at 5 years and 11 months while the next oldest female is A7 at 4 years and 8 months.
News of the pairing marks a bright spot for the program, which recently lost two birds. B7, the youngest member, died in January of 2025 from lead poisoning just three months after being released into Yurok ancestral lands.
Almost exactly a year later, B8 was discovered in a remote part of the Bald Hills area. The cause of death for the nearly 3-year-old male has not been released.
Known as nature’s cleanup crew, the apex scavengers play an important role in the ecosystem by clearing large carcasses from the landscape, helping prevent the spread of disease, but that also makes them vulnerable.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, half of all condor deaths in the wild are caused by the birds feeding on carrion contaminated with lead ammunition fragments.
Along with human-made dangers, powerlines being another, the birds’ aforementioned biological clock also presents a barrier to their ability to rebound. Not only slow to mature, condors are also, as the tribe notes, slow to procreate, usually producing only one egg every two years.
Most chicks, which don’t fly for months, spend more than a year with their parents learning what it means to be a condor, including how to navigate the terrain and live in a highly social but hierarchical flock.
While still teetering on the edge of extinction, reintroduction efforts have made great strides for the species. Back in 1982, only 22 wild condors remained in a small pocket of mountainous area in Southern California. Five years later, the last of them were placed into captive breeding programs in a race against time to save the largest bird in North America.
Over the ensuing decades, those numbers have slowly been expanding. As of December of 2025, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports there are nearly 400 birds flying free at release sites operating in California — including Big Sur and Pinnacles — as well as Arizona and Baja California, Mexico.
The North Coast effort is the newest to join the fold following nearly two decades of painstaking work by the Yurok Tribe’s wildlife department after a group of elders identified the condor as the first and most important terrestrial species to bring back to their ancestral lands.
As in many Indigenous cultures, the condor is sacred in Yurok tradition. Believed to be among the Earth’s first creatures and the one that carries their prayers to the Creator, prey-go-neesh also joins in the tribe’s World Renewal ceremonies to bring balance back to the world through the gift of feathers, which are used in dancers’ regalia.
Before the first birds in the NCCRP program were released in 2022, the last spotting in the region was around the turn of the 20th century after settlers decimated the local population.
The hope is the Humboldt County release site — the first located in the northern reaches of the condors’ former range, which once stretched to the Canadian border and east to Utah, Montana and Colorado — will act as a gateway for the birds to spread their wings out into the Pacific Northwest.
For now, the program plans to release at least one new cohort of birds every summer over the course of two decades.
Ultimately, the goal of the recovery effort is to allow the condor to build up self-sustaining populations that no longer need to have their numbers boosted by breeding programs and to reach the status West has described as “birds without tags,” living their lives without human intervention.
With the possible impending arrival of the first wild chick born on the North Coast in more than 130 years, one that would be raised by free-flying parents to soar along the Klamath River, ride thermals across the landscape and spiral upward into the heavens, carrying on its wings the prayers of a people who brought prey-go-neesh home, that goal is coming closer.
Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the assistant editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 105 or kim@northcoastjournal.com.
This article appears in King Salmon Recovery, Egg-citing Condor News + Black Heritage Ball.