California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) 463 at Dusk

When the afternoon light began to fade into evening I made my way back down the trail from High Peaks to Bear Gulch where the car was parked at Pinnacles National Park in San Benito County in the land of Steinbeck. I had been watching several condors in the sky and perched atop the various monoliths at the crest of the trail and all but one had forsaken me for privacy and possibly superior roosts elsewhere. Only condor 888 "Cedric" (released at San Simeon in December of 2018) remained settled down possibly for the night on some High Peaks boulder. It was probably close to 8pm but the sun was just sinking below the horizon and I was in the shadow of the ridge so everything was shaded and richer in color than during the blinding light (and merciless swarms of flies constantly humming around my head and sucking my sweat if not biting as well) of say noon. In the cool of the shadows even the vindictive insects almost entirely faded, and it is such a fine feeling to be going downhill, inertia and gravity working with you rather than against - as they are when you're climbing then trudging and cursing all things as you gasp your way up the "steep and narrow" section of the High Peaks Trail. As is almost always the case when I'm wandering anywhere with my camera well-stowed, I rounded a switchback in the trail and up ahead, atop a gray pine perched California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) 463. I used up my last few minutes of memory card space capturing my usual terrible footage (this time even with the monopod which I had still not entirely figured out how to adjust and use to best advantage). Believe it or not, this is clipped from a longer take and represents the best (of the worst, I guess). When I had no more SD card space left, I was fiddling with my camera to see how quickly I could delete some other awful footage only to replace it with more. I heard some brush shuffling behind me somewhere, and then I heard a few pebble-falls, but I was so intent on freeing up space before 463 took off that I ignored it. Note to self: Never ignore clues to something you might be missing going on nearby. Anyway, all of the sudden I heard massive low and resonant wingbeats above and behind me. I'm not exactly sure where they came from, but condors 692 and 726 flew right over my head, probably only twenty feet above me, and joined 463 atop that gray pine just ahead. The three of them perched there for a few moments (I think they were possibly joined by a fourth but I just can't rely on my memory anymore...I tend to make things up) but not long enough for me to get my camera back in order, before they all took off to the North toward those High Peaks crags the condors seem to love so well.

For as terrible as all of my captures are, I feel like every time I record any condor footage, I get a new treat or two. This time, aside from the experience of the condors flying right over me, I for the first time saw one of the magnificent birds perched atop a tree. The other thing, and this is pretty tiny, almost pin-dot size, is that you can actually see right through his beak. Rather, through the pore of 463's nostrils. I've seen this before in turkey vultures...looking at them in profile their nostrils (maybe it's erroneous to say nostrils...I guess the proper term is "nares") line up in such a way that you can see sunlight through the beak. This is not the case for many if not most birds and I wonder if it has any specific survival value (apparently gulls, cranes and new world vultures have nares you can see daylight through - other birds have a septum in between which blocks the view). I seldom get to see these birds so close as to be able to discern that detail, and this was a very nice first (and again, for as awful as my camera skills are, without my zoom, I would NEVER have been able to see that sort of detail in real life). I guess that's one more thing I like about taking video, by the time I get to see all the details too small for my mole-like eyes to pick up on the trail, I can be safe and bug free at home with popcorn as I discover these tiny fragments of the overwhelming richness of all that we see, and all that escapes our notice.

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