California condors in California: Range, recovery, identification and protection of North America's largest bird

California condors live in the wild in California again, all of them reintroduced birds or their wild-hatched offspring. At the end of 2025 there were 216 condors flying free in California, 99 in the Southern California flock and 117 in the Central California flock, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 2025 population status report. A separate experimental flock is being established on the North Coast around Redwood National Park. The world population, wild and captive, was 607.

The condor is listed as endangered under both state and federal law and is fully protected in California. The state's official checklist lists it as California Condor, Gymnogyps californianus, with a note that its reintroduction is in progress and the species is not yet established.

This guide covers how to identify a condor and tell it from a turkey vulture, where condors fly in California today, how the species was brought back from 27 birds, how it feeds and nests, the few sounds it makes and the laws that protect it. It is part of our guide to the birds of California and our guide to birds of prey in California.

California condor at a glance

Sources: CBRC checklist (September 8, 2026); USFWS 2025 Annual Population Status; CDFW California Condor page; All About Birds (length); CDFW listed-animals list (July 2026); Fish and Game Code section 3511; 50 CFR 10.13.

California condor identification: North America's largest bird, with wings spanning more than nine feet:

The California condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world. When it soars, its wings spread more than nine feet from tip to tip, and it may weigh more than 20 pounds, CDFW says. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds gives a length of 46.1 to 52.8 inches and calls it the largest bird in North America, bigger than a bald eagle.

Adults are black with large white patches under the wings and a bare head and neck that are yellowish orange. The National Park Service notes that an adult's bare head can turn a deep pinkish red during courtship or alarm. Young condors have dark heads and mottled grayish patches under the wings instead of clean white ones, and they take on adult coloring at about six to eight years old. In the air a condor rarely flaps. It looks heavy and steady, with long, broad, fingered wings, a small head and a short tail.

The turkey vulture is the bird most often confused with it, and the NPS says the two can be mistaken for each other at a distance. The turkey vulture is much smaller, with a wingspan of about 67 to 70 inches. Seen from below, an adult condor shows white triangular patches along the front edge of each wing, while a turkey vulture's paler feathers run along the rear edge. Adult turkey vultures also have red heads.

California condors in California: 216 wild birds in central and Southern California flocks:

Wild condors in California today live in two main flocks. Captive-bred birds have been released in central California, at sites in the Big Sur area and Pinnacles National Park, and in Southern California, where the first two were set free in Ventura County in 1992. The USFWS counted 117 condors in the central flock and 99 in the southern flock at the end of 2025. During 2025, 10 chicks fledged from wild nests in California, five in each flock, and 20 captive-bred birds were released there.

Pinnacles is one of the more accessible places to look. The NPS says condors make their homes among the park's rock towers, cliffs and spires and can glide from Pinnacles to the Big Sur coast in about an hour. The park released its first two condors on December 20, 2003, and in 2016 a chick known as condor 828 fledged from a nest inside the park, which the NPS describes as the first condor chick there since 1898.

Condors are returning to Northern California as well. The Yurok Tribe, the National Park Service, the USFWS and other partners run a reintroduction on the North Coast, where the Yurok name for the condor is Prey-go-neesh. The NPS says the first birds arrived in March 2022, and a release site in Redwood National Park opened that spring with an initial group of five. In 2021 the USFWS designated those birds a nonessential experimental population under the Endangered Species Act. The 2025 report counts 25 wild birds in an experimental Pacific Northwest population and keeps them separate from California's 216.

California condor recovery: From 27 birds in 1987 to 607 at the end of 2025:

Condors once lived across much of North America. In recent centuries they ranged from British Columbia to Baja California. CDFW says that as people settled the West, condors were shot, poisoned, captured and disturbed. Their eggs were collected, and their food supply of large wild animals shrank. By the late 1900s the last birds were limited to the mountains of Southern California.

Protection came early but did not stop the decline. In the mid-1980s biologists captured every remaining wild condor. When the last was taken in April 1987, the world population was 27 birds, all held at the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The first chick hatched in captivity in 1988, and releases began in 1992. In 2006 a Big Sur pair nesting in the burned-out cavity of a coast redwood became the first free-flying condors documented nesting in central California in more than 100 years, according to CDFW.

Captive breeding now takes place at the Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey, the Los Angeles Zoo, the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, the Oregon Zoo and Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City. The USFWS counted 215 condors in captivity and 392 in the wild at the end of 2025, including flocks in Arizona and Utah and in Baja California.

California condor habitat, diet and nesting: Carrion, cliff caves and one chick at a time:

Condors feed only on carrion. CDFW says they search from the air for dead animals such as deer and cattle, and the NPS lists prey from rodents to cows and marine mammals. They soar for hours without flapping and can glide at more than 55 miles per hour, and the NPS says a condor can travel up to 200 miles in a day. CDFW's older habitat account notes that food must lie in the open so the birds can land and take off, and that condors roost on cliff ledges and in large trees and snags. Turkey vultures compete with them for food.

Nest sites are cliff caves in the mountains, and some condors have nested in large cavities in giant sequoias. A pair raises one chick at a time. The four-inch egg is laid in late winter or spring and takes about two months to hatch, and more than a year passes from laying until the young bird can live on its own. The NPS says a pair produces one young every two years. Condors do not reach adulthood until age six or seven, and CDFW says they can live 40 years or more.

California condor calls and sounds: Hisses and snorts at the nest:

Condors are usually silent. All About Birds' sound page says adults can give a range of hisses and snorts, mainly when defending nest sites, and that chicks hiss, wheeze and grunt at adults. The page also notes that a condor's wingbeats can be heard more than half a mile away. It includes a recording made in California.

California condor legal status in California: Endangered and fully protected under state and federal law:

The condor has been protected as an endangered species by federal law since 1967 and by California law since 1971, CDFW says. It is one of the birds listed as fully protected in Fish and Game Code section 3511, which means it may not be taken or possessed at any time except in narrow cases such as scientific research, including recovery work. It is also on the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act list in 50 CFR 10.13.

Lead is the condor's main known threat today. Condors swallow lead fragments when they feed on carcasses of animals shot with lead ammunition. From 1992 through 2025, the USFWS confirmed 161 deaths from lead poisoning in the wild free-flying population, half of the 324 deaths with a known cause. In 2025, 13 condors died in California's wild flocks, and five of those deaths were confirmed as lead poisoning. Nine deaths across all populations that year were still awaiting final necropsy.

California has responded with law. In 2007 the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act (AB 821) created a non-lead zone for hunting within condor range, and the Fish and Game Commission adopted rules to carry it out in 2008. In 2013 AB 711 required nonlead ammunition statewide for taking all wildlife, with full implementation required by July 2019. CDFW and the NPS also list poison bait, contaminants, ravens that take eggs and chicks, collisions with wires and structures, power poles and swallowed microtrash among the risks.

California condors in California: A recovering population that still depends on people:

California condors in California have grown from none in the wild in 1987 to 216 free-flying birds at the end of 2025, with a new flock taking shape on the North Coast. The species remains endangered and fully protected, California's official checklist still treats it as not yet established, and captive breeding, releases and lead reduction continue to carry the recovery. The figures in this guide will be updated when the USFWS publishes its next annual status report.