Combining a 3.3 m wingspan with a weight of up to 15 kg makes this the largest flying bird in the world
Andean condor — the wandering albatross has a longer wingspan, the great bustard is heavier in one record.
Nature · Birds
Andean condor
Vulnerable (IUCN, uplisted 2020) · c. 6,700 mature individuals
Vultur gryphus — Cathartidae
The great black-and-white vulture of the Andes, with a wingspan of up to about 3.3 m and a weight of up to 15 kg, making it the largest flying bird in the world by combined weight and wingspan. Males carry a fleshy comb or caruncle on the crown and a white neck ruff. It is the national bird of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile, and appears on all four coats of arms.
How to spot them
- ▸Huge black bird with a broad white patch across the upperwing and a white downy ruff at the base of the neck
- ▸Males have a dark fleshy comb (caruncle) on the crown and a wattled throat; females do not — unusual sexual dimorphism in a raptor-like bird
- ▸Males are larger than females, the reverse of most birds of prey
- ▸Soars for hours on mountain updraughts, flapping only about one per cent of the time
- ▸Adult eyes are brown in males, red in females; head skin flushes colour in display
How to know it
Males carry a fleshy comb on the crown and are larger than females, the reverse of most raptors
Andean condor — unusual sexual dimorphism.
The national bird of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile, and on all four coats of arms
Andean condor.
A 2020 tracking study found one bird flew over 170 km flapping for only one per cent of the time
Andean condor — a master of static soaring.
Its genus name is simply the Latin for vulture, and its specific name comes from the griffin
Vultur gryphus, the Andean condor.
Still captured alive for the Andean festival of the Yawar Fiesta, in which it is tied to a bull's back
Andean condor — a persistent cultural threat.
Uplisted from Near Threatened to Vulnerable in 2020, with about 6,700 mature birds left
Andean condor — IUCN Red List.
Quick-fire facts
- •Wingspan 2.7–3.3 m; weight 8–15 kg, males heavier than females; may live over 50 years, and over 70 in captivity
- •IUCN Red List: Vulnerable, uplisted from Near Threatened in 2020; roughly 6,700 mature individuals
- •Range: the Andes and adjacent Pacific coasts from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego, plus the Santa Marta massif
- •Lays a single egg every second year on a bare cliff ledge; the chick stays with its parents for up to two years
- •Like other New World vultures it urohidrates — it excretes onto its own legs to cool itself
- •Poisoning of carcasses put out for pumas and foxes is a leading cause of mass mortality; 34 were poisoned in one incident in Argentina in 2018
- •Charles Darwin observed and wrote about condors in Chile during the voyage of the Beagle
- •In Inca cosmology the condor represented the upper world, hanan pacha, alongside the puma and the snake
Drill it — 8 cards
1 / 8new card
Sources
- BirdLife International — Red List update: the plight of the condor