Barbara Steinmann, age 11, of Milwaukee, Wis., for her question:
What is a condor?
The condor is a vulture. He foods on carrion, on the dead bodies of fish, whales and porpoises. He also raids the lonely nest of the cormorant to devour bird eggs and he searches the mountains and. the ~a~as for any carcass he can find. If you are squeamish, these facts ma:,y sot you against the great bird, which would be a great pity. He is one of the most magnificent of all birds and remember, the world would be a very= messy place without garbage men.
Mother Nature keeps the world neat with the help of a vast army of carrion eating garbage men. These cleaner‑upper: range all the way from the big condor and the handsome American eagle down to the tiny bacteria of the soil. Without them, the world would be full of ratting carcasses and cluttered. with rotting vegetation. So let's not look down upon the condor. He is a hard working, carrion eating cleaner‑upper.
The great bird is dressed in glossy black, white and orange red. His plumage is black with white patches, his head and hock are bare and bright orange red. The condor of the t1ndes wears a red wattle like a crown upon his head. His colors are bright and gay, his size even more impressive.
The great body is three feat long, the huge wings have a spread of almost ten feet. Only a few very large albatrosses have a wider wing spread. .'end no bird that flies is as heavy as the 25 pound condor. Despite his weight he is not clumsy in the air. His power of flight is magnificent.
Over the highest Andes he often soars as much as five miles above sea level. Up there, he is a master of gliding. He wheels and circles, catching every rising current of air to keep him aloft. Charles Darwin once watched, spellbound, while a group of condors soared aloft for almost an hour, without flapping a wing.
This splendid bird is at his best in the air. HE is clumsy on the ground, for it is no easy ,job to launch his groat weight. Perhaps, for this reason, he chooses to live in high mountain crags. The condor of South America lives in the lofty 1".ndec. His only relative, the California condor, lives among the high Sierra Nevada mountains.
The California condor has become rare, Maybe less than a hundred of them now exist. For this reason they are strictly protected by law.
Mr, and Mrs. Condor are good and patient parents. The nest, made of leaves, is high on a lofty ledge or in a cave. Mrs. Condor lays two large white eggs and Mr. Condor helps her hatch them. This job takes seven weeks. The youngsters are a year old before they fly. They need two more years of family care before they are able to leave their parents.
When at last they grow up they, too, will become Nature's garbage man. They will soar, miles above sea level, scanning the earth with their keen eyes, searching for clean‑up jobs.