Birds
Andean Condor
Vultur gryphus · also called Andean condor, condor de los Andes
The Andean condor is the great soaring bird of South America — a black-and-white vulture with a three-metre wingspan that hangs almost motionless over the mountains, using rising air to travel enormous distances without effort. It is a national symbol across the Andes and one of the longest-lived birds in the world.
Overview
Andean condors live along the Andes and the Pacific coastal ranges, from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego, from sea-level deserts up to about 5,000 metres. They roost on inaccessible cliff ledges, often in loose groups, and spend the day soaring over open terrain in search of food. They are highly mobile, ranging over hundreds of square kilometres.
Built for soaring, not flapping
The condor has the largest wing area of any land bird. That, plus a home range full of thermals and ridge updrafts, lets it fly by gliding almost exclusively — tracking studies recorded a condor flying for five hours and 160 kilometres while flapping for only a couple of minutes, mostly at take-off. Getting a 15-kilogram bird into the air is the hard part; staying up is nearly free.
Telling the sexes apart
Unusually for a bird of prey, the male is larger than the female, and the two look different: the male has a fleshy comb on his crown and dark eyes, the female has no comb and red eyes. Both have bare heads — an adaptation for feeding inside carcasses — and a white ruff of feathers around the neck.
Diet and role
The Andean condor is a scavenger, feeding on large carcasses of wild and domestic animals inland and on dead marine mammals and seabird colonies along the coast. By quickly consuming carrion it limits the spread of disease. It does not hunt healthy livestock, despite a persistent belief among some ranchers that it does.
Slow to breed
A pair produces one chick every two years, incubating a single egg on a bare cliff ledge and feeding the young bird for well over a year. This slow cycle is why the species cannot absorb extra losses.
Status
The Andean condor is Vulnerable and declining, with roughly 6,700 mature birds left and local extinctions in the north. The main threats are poisoning (from poisoned carcasses and lead ammunition), persecution, and power-line collisions. As the national bird of four countries, it is the focus of captive breeding, reintroduction, and campaigns against carcass poisoning.
Andean Condor: common questions
Is the Andean condor the biggest flying bird?
It depends how you measure. By wingspan a few seabirds beat it — the wandering albatross reaches about 3.5 metres — but those wings are long and thin. The Andean condor has the greatest wing surface area of any land bird, and among birds that can actually get airborne under their own power it is one of the two or three heaviest, with big males around 15 kilograms. The great bustard and the mute swan are comparable in weight. The kori bustard and the condor are often both cited as "the heaviest flying bird," within the uncertainty of the measurements.
How can such a heavy bird fly so far?
By almost never flapping. The Andean condor lives where mountains and coastlines generate constant rising air — thermals off sun-warmed slopes and updrafts where wind hits a ridge or cliff — and its enormous wings let it convert that lift into distance very efficiently. GPS tracking of Andean condors found one bird covering more than 160 kilometres and five hours of flight while flapping for only a few minutes in total; the birds flap mainly during take-off and landing. Powered flapping flight at their size would be exhausting and is largely avoided.
What does the Andean condor eat?
Almost entirely carrion. It soars over open country watching for carcasses — wild guanaco and deer, and increasingly domestic cattle and sheep — and along parts of the coast it feeds on dead seals, whales, and fish and raids the eggs and chicks of seabird and penguin colonies. As a large scavenger it plays an important sanitation role, stripping carcasses quickly and reducing the spread of disease. It rarely if ever kills healthy prey.
Why is the Andean condor threatened?
Its numbers have fallen because it reproduces extremely slowly — one chick every two years — so any added mortality has an outsized effect. The leading killers are poisoning (condors die at carcasses laced with poison meant for pumas and foxes, or from lead in carcasses shot with lead ammunition), persecution by ranchers who wrongly believe condors kill livestock, and collisions with power lines. It has already disappeared from much of Venezuela and Colombia. It is the national bird of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador, which has helped drive reintroduction and anti-poisoning programmes.