A Wing and A Prayer

There is still “a sliver of hope” this year will be the one for the first condor chick in more than a century to hatch on the North Coast. 

The breeding pair A0 and A1 have recently been seen together away from their nesting site during a time when a hatchling would still need constant care, indicating their initial attempt was unsuccessful. 

Such an outcome is not completely unexpected, the Yurok Tribe reiterated in the wake of the sightings after striking a cautiously optimistic note last month in announcing the oldest members of the Northern California Condor Restoration Program flock were showing signs of tending an egg.

“Many things may have gone wrong, ranging from an infertile egg to inadequate incubation chilling the egg to hatching failure,” the tribe said. “Hatching, especially, is a delicate phase for new chicks and it is possible that challenges during this process were insurmountable, and not the fault of the new parents.” 

And, if something did go wrong, there’s a chance the two could try again this year, something seen at other release sites under the same circumstances.

Even without a wild-born addition arriving, the attempt marks a turning point for the Yurok-led effort to return the endangered bird they know as prey-go-neesh to the northern reaches of its former range in a partnership with Redwood National and State Parks.

“While it is unlikely that a chick will fledge from the initial egg, we remain pleased to have taken this first step toward successful reproduction,” Yurok Wildlife Department Director Tiana Williams-Claussen said. “We continue to hold a sliver of hope that it happens this year and look forward to future attempts knowing that the time will yet come when we have our first wild-fledged chick flying-free in our homeland.”

Because the couple selected a remote nesting site, no one had been able to see the actual tree, let alone try to peek inside. Instead, the NCCRP team relies on the birds’ behavior and flight patterns for clues.

While the ultimate outcome might not be known for several weeks, having this experience under their wings bodes well for A0 and A1’s success in the future.

“Compared to the first, the probability of successful incubation is substantially higher for condors’ second season because they learn from their mistakes,” said NCCRP Manager and Yurok Wildlife Department Senior Biologist Chris West.

Also known by their Yurok names Ney-gem’ ‘Ne-chween-kah, which means “She carries our prayers,” and Hlow Hoo-let, “At last I (or we) fly,” A0 and A1 were among the first to soar over the tribe’s ancestral lands since the turn of the 20th century.

Together with Nes-kwe-chokw’ (He returns/arrives, A2) and Poy’-we-son (The one who goes ahead, “leader,” A3), the captive-born quartet were trailblazers for a flock now numbering 24 following infusions of additional condors brought in each year from captive-breeding programs. 

Late bloomers in the avian world, condors don’t reach maturity until 6 or 7 and only produce a single egg every other year. A0 and A1 were the first to make that mark but others will follow soon. And, by taking the first foray into the mating sphere, the pair has set the stage for what could become an increasingly frequent event. 

“We’re in an interesting place,” West said of the flock in an April 3 interview with Journal. “For one thing, this is probably going to inspire interest in other birds.”

In fact, he noted, a tech with the program recently reported one of the flock’s original males, A3, was making mating overtures toward the next oldest female, A7, and she “didn’t seem totally repulsed by him.”

Some of the other more senior birds have also been displaying what’s known as the condor courtship dance, partially spreading out the span of their nearly 10-foot wings while bowing their head before a potential mate, often rocking back and forth.

“We’ve seen this at other sites where the birds aren’t really acting like adults, they aren’t really doing breeding behaviors and then all of the sudden one of the older pairs kicks into gear and all the other birds are watching them, and then all of the sudden there’s this flurry of breeding-type behavior,” West said. 

Depending on what happens, A0 and A1 might not be going it alone for long.

“If we assume they can start at 6 years, which condors do, in 2027, if they fail this year, they would be trying to nest again,” he said. “And we would have three other females that would be hitting that 6-year-old mark, so we could have four nesting attempts. … And if we use those same parameters, come 2028, assuming some of those nests fail and they try again, we could have up to six nesting attempts. In 2029, we could have up to eight nests. And in 2030, we could have up to 12 nests. So, it could really grow quickly.” 

Because A0 and A1 selected the nook of an old growth redwood in an inaccessible area, technology has been stepping in to act as hiking boots on the ground as their breeding journey unfolds. 

Using data gathered from transmitters attached to their wings when they can’t put eyes on the birds, the NCCRP team has been able to track and analyze the pair’s activity over time — as well as the others in the flock. 

What turned out to be one of the first clues of an egg started as a potential worst-case scenario — the program received a mortality signal from A1. “We were thinking we had a dead bird, maybe, which was stressful,” West said.

But in talking with the NCCRP’s partners, including a fellow release site, another theory began to emerge: Maybe A1 was in a nest and inactivity raised the alarm.

NCCRP staff had already been following the pair closely after the two began showing mating behavior and tracked them to one particular tree using coordinates from their transmitters and Google Earth imaging. 

As the team started homing in on their movements, a pattern began to unfold. When one or the other went inside the redwood’s cavity, GPS data points for the bird would disappear because the transmitters were no longer connecting to the satellite. 

“We knew she had been in a cavity for four days and then he had been missing from the GPS signal for a couple of days, so then we were just guessing at this point, ‘Maybe he’s on an egg. Maybe this is a good thing,’” West said.

Meanwhile, he added, A1 kept going “from mortality to regular then going back to mortality.” 

“We knew it was coming out of mortality, so we had high hopes,” West said. “And then, at the end of the stint, he came into the release site and we saw him on the cameras and were, “OK, he’s back. It’s all good.’”

Once A1 appeared back at the secured location in Redwoods National and State Parks, where the flock often gathers at the continuous supply of carrion set out by the team to ensure the birds always have a safe, reliable source of food, A0 went GPS silent, West said. 

“We were like, ‘OK, this definitely looks like we have a nest going on,” he said.

Based on the data, the NCCRP determined A0 likely laid the egg in early February, which put the expected hatch date around the first week of this month. 

Because condor couples share parenting duties, attention then turned to looking for alternations in the birds’ behavior that indicated the two transitioned from the incubation period to tending a chick, which stays with its parents for more than a year. Or, that the pair had an unsuccessful attempt, which unfortunately appears to be the case.

While still teetering on the edge of extinction, the North Coast condor flock alone is now larger than the entire worldwide population back in 1982, when only 22 remained in a small pocket of mountainous area in Southern California.  

Five years later, the last ones in the wild were placed into captive breeding programs in a race against time to save the largest bird in North America. 

Over the intervening years, the California Condor Recovery Program has seen success stories. From those handful of birds, there are now around 600, according to the 2025 status report released by US Fish and Wildlife Service in February.

More than half of those are flying free at release sites operating in California — including Big Sur and Pinnacles — as well as Arizona and Baja California, Mexico. The NCCRP is the latest to join the fold.

As in many Indigenous cultures, the condor is sacred in Yurok tradition. Believed to be among the Earth’s first creatures and the one who carries their prayers to the Creator, the bird 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 the dancers’ regalia.

After a council of elders identified the condor as the first and most important terrestrial species to bring back to their ancestral lands, the Yurok Tribe spent nearly 20 years laying the groundwork for prey-go-neesh’s return.

Before the North Coast’s initial four birds were released in 2022, condors were last seen in the region around the late 1800s after their numbers were decimated by settlers who poisoned and shot the birds.

A lot has changed in those four years, including the appearance of the oldest condors. Now shedding the black head feathers and ebon coloring of their juvenile years, some are taking on a more salmon hue across the neck and head, which will develop into a palette of pink, red, orange, yellow and light blue as the birds age.

But amid the milestones, there have also been losses — as well as close misses.

In January of 2025, B7, also known by the Yurok name Pey-noh-pey-o-wok’ (I am friend or kind or good natured), died after being poisoned by a lead air gun pellet found in its gizzard after just three months in the wild. 

“It’s particularly tragic because B7 was such a friendly guy,” Williams-Claussen said at the time. “Not that we don’t love all of our condors but he had our particular love because of that. He was just a joy to watch engage with the other condors and he was our youngest condor. They’re not our babies but it feels like a baby’s been lost, like one of our children has been lost.”

Known as nature’s clean-up crew, condors play an important role in the ecosystem as apex scavengers that use their powerful beaks to pierce the tough skins of dead animals, helping clear large carcasses from the environment and preventing the spread of disease.

But that makes the birds vulnerable to lead poisoning. Several others in the flock have received intensive treatments after eating tainted carrion, with some of the cases so severe that it wasn’t clear the condor would survive.

As in the years before the first prey-go-neesh arrived back in Yurok country, the tribe has worked extensively to educate local hunters about non-lead options. California also banned the use of lead ammunition for hunting in 2019.

Just one year later, in January of this year, B8 was also found dead. The 3-year-old male was named ‘Ne-kew, meaning “Our Little Sibling,” because despite being low down in the flock’s hierarchy, he insisted on “tagging along and inserting himself wherever the more established birds were congregating,” according to Williams Claussen.

As in all cases of a confirmed fatality, the bird was sent for a necropsy. While the NCCRP was still awaiting final results earlier this month, West said it appears nothing “really definitive” has been found.

He said his best guess was the bird might have been blown out of a tree by high winds during a storm that hit at the time. With gusts up to 60 mph, the bird might have been unable to get off the ground to safety and fallen victim to a predator.  

Meanwhile, the current roster appears to be integrating well. Highly intelligent and social creatures with definite individual personalities, West said the birds are “going down to communal roosting areas and hanging out together.”

Come summer, another seven condors — four females and three males — are set to join the flock already in progress, making for a very different first flight into the wild then some of their predecessors. 

“It’s really hard for those first couple of releases, especially the first birds, where they go out and they have no other birds to follow on a landscape,” West said. 

Instead, they started from scratch, learning the ropes of their newly reclaimed territory on the fly. And, by doing so, “reestablishing that condor knowledge that can be passed around the flock as it grows.”

“That really gives the birds that are going out now a leg up on those first couple of releases,” West said.

While the North Coast condors are currently centered in Yurok country, the hope is the restoration program will eventually act as a gateway for the birds to spread their wings out into the Pacific Northwest.

But, for now, the flock has been sticking somewhat close to home for a species that can cover up to 200 miles a day by soaring on thermals across the wide expanse.

“There’s still not a lot of long-distance movements across the landscape, where birds are staying away from the release area,” West said. “We are kind of expecting that. It’s something that’s happened at all the other sites, where eventually the birds just start taking off in all directions and not necessarily coming back to the one location of the release area anymore.”

But, he notes, the program is not in any rush. The more the birds feed on wild-found carcasses, West said, the higher the risk of the lead poisoning, the cause of more than half of deaths among free-flying condors.   

“The idea here has been to just feed in one spot (at the release site) and allow them to have plenty of food to prevent them from toxicosis,” West said. “So they get older and a little stronger and then eventually they are going to go and find their way across the landscape and lead will have its way with them the way it does. But we can give them a leg up by getting their wings under them for a couple of years while they are young and more naive. Then, they’ll eventually stand on their own.” 

Ultimately, the overall 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 releases from breeding programs and to reach the status West has described as “birds without tags,” living their lives without human intervention.

For now, the wait continues for that day to come.

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 A Wing and A Prayer.