California Condor #236 aka "Tiny"

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Hatchday: March 22nd, 2001 Hatch location San Diego Wild Animal Park Sex: Female Current Status: Partnered with Shadow (#209) Offspring: No documented breeding attempts Current location: Big Sur, CA

Tiny was hand-raised using a condor head puppet made of leather. The puppet techniques used were quite skilled, and her behavior is similar to the behavior of condors raised by their parents. She was released on December 12th, 2002 with a red tag. A few years ago, we decided that such a brightly colored tag might draw unwelcome attention to the condors, and we changed all identification tags to a black/white color scheme. While this can make a condor harder to spot for the biologists, we hope that they are also harder to see by an eagle in a bad mood.

While Tiny is healthy, her frame size is small for a condor. She naturally weighs 3 or 4 pounds less than the average female, but regardless, tiny for a condor is still pretty big! When Tiny became an adult, she chose Shadow (#209) as her mate. He is two years older than her. It is very typical for female condors to select an older mate. Females want the most dominant male available and these are often the oldest males. These two have already set up an excellent breeding territory and are well on their way to reproducing.

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