People around the world can get up close and personal with a wild endangered California condor chick through a live stream on the Santa Barbara Zoo website.
The chick, numbered 980, was born on April 10. Its parents are a nine-year-old female and a 19-year-old male, and this marks their first nesting attempt together. This is also the first time they are together on the livestream as a pair. The female previously had one chick, and the father fledged a chick with a different partner.
The two are nestled in a canyon in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in Ventura County.
This comes after 2018 was known as a record-breaking nesting season, with 12 nests recorded across Ventura, Kern and Santa Barbara counties. Six of those nests were successful.
The livestream capabilities went viral when the ‘Condor cam’ allowed viewers to watch a chick hatch in the wild for the first time in history back in 2015.
Today, California condors are designated as “endangered” with a population of nearly 490 birds worldwide. The number one killer of condors is lead poisoning, which happens when the birds feed on carcasses that contain lead bullets. “Micro trash,” consisting of small items thrown out as litter into the wild, is also a common threat to the species.
If you want to visit the livestream on the “Condor cam,” you can head to the Santa Barbara Zoo’s nest camera.
