Seeing and Believing

The drive down the California coast through Big Sur is breathtakingly beautiful, cruising alongside sheer cliff faces with the Pacific spreading out by your side.  It's also terrifying, with all the hairpin turns and oncoming traffic, as well as a bit stressful, with the lack of gas stations, but, yeah, mostly it was the whole going off the edge of a cliff possibility that kept my attention focused.  Between the precipices below and my rapidly draining fuel gage in front of me, I was having a hard time doing what I wanted to do - look up.  I'd come to Big Sur with one goal in mind, and it wasn't scenery (though I did appreciate that).  I wanted to check off a major item on my bucket list/life list, and see a California condor in the wild.

(For the entire saga of why seeing a condor in the wild - why there even are condors in the wild anymore - check out this excellent book).

I'd written to anyone I knew who might have any insights on where to look and followed their leads, but without much luck.  I was on the cusp of giving up, when, at one overlook, I noticed some distant flecks on the far off horizon, above the mountains.  They were barely perceptible, but I figured that for them to be visible at all from such a distance, they'd have to be pretty big.

Pulling out my binoculars, I zoomed in.  Even through the lenses, I could barely make them out.  All I could tell for sure was that they were big, black birds, with white patches on the underside of their wings.  Whereas the lighter area of a turkey vulture is on the outside edge, these patches were extending from the armpits, for lack of better word.  There was only one bird like that here.  These were my California condors.  Periodically, they would dip behind the hills and out of sight.  After a few minutes, they dipped back there and did not emerge again.

I was torn between two emotions.  Excitement, that I'd seen them.  Disappointment, that I really hadn't.

Most encounters with wild animals are kind of like that - quick, fleeting, and with at least a little doubt thrown in (there have been several encounters I've had with rarely seen wild animals - puma in New Mexico, bobcat in Maryland, aardvark in Tanzania - that have been so blink-and-you-miss-it that I've found myself wondering if that really happened or if I had some sort of hallucination).  

Wild animals generally do not want to be your friend.  They often know you are there before you know they are there, and either flee before you see them, or as soon as they realize that you see them.  Hundreds of years of persecution does that to a species, and for much of our recent shared history, it's been survival of the wary.

From "The Condor Cave" on Facebook

Not that these condors, a tremendous distance away, probably paid me any mind.  But they were free in their element, utterly unapproachable.  What I saw of them was on their terms, not mine.  Working in a zoo gives me a lot of close access to wild animals, many of which have become habituated, sometimes even solicitous of contact with humans.  Not surprisingly, I've rarely had such encounters with wild wild animals.

Rarely, but not never.

In high school, my biology teacher took a group of students hiking in the Chihuahua Desert.  I was just starting to get into birding under his (pun unintended) wing, and was so excited about all of the new species I either saw or hoped to see on that trip.  One morning, we were climbing a mountain when we were suddenly surrounded by a loud, boisterous group of inquisitive blue birds.  They swooped around us, perching at eye level, looking at us inquisitively, then hopping down by our feet, flying away a short distance if we moved too-quickly.  We stood in their midst for several minutes before they seemingly got bored and flew off.  Still, it was a really cool experience.

As they flew off, my teacher smiled and said, "You've all seen a lot birds on this trip.  You've experienced a Mexican jay, now."

Experiences like that are rare - but I like to think that the rarity just makes them more special when they do occur.