A “Condor Cam” is showing the care and growth of a California condor egg hatched this week at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Conservancy’s online camera shows adult condors Towich and Sulu raising the chick as their own at
sandiegozooglobal.org/video/condor_cam.
“The condor program is very complex, and the Condor Cam allows thousands of people to see some of the activities that go on behind the scenes as we prepare chicks for release in the wild,” said Michael Mace, curator of birds at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Noticing that the embryo in the egg wasn’t positioned correctly — making a natural hatch unlikely — zoo staff helped incubate the chick, zoo officials said.
Staff removed a small piece of shell when they observed the chick was ready to hatch before placing the egg with foster parents Towich and Sulu, who successfully hatched the chick.
In managing genetics for condors, eggs are sometimes transferred from one breeding center to another. In this case, Towich and Sulu are the foster parents for an egg produced at the Los Angeles Zoo and transferred to the Safari Park.
To diversify the genetics of the condor population, eggs or condors are transferred to various locations. With this case, four eggs in total were transferred between the Los Angeles Zoo and the Safari Park.
Since the recovery program began in the 1980s, when only 22 condors were left in the wild, the Safari Park has hatched 185 chicks and released more than 80 birds in the wild. More than 400 condors now exist, half of them flying free in California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, Mexico.
— San Diego Zoo
