Dorothy, our Andean
Condor, or Vultur gryphus in Latin, is one of our largest birds at World Bird Sanctuary. She has a wingspan of
roughly 10 and a half feet, which happens to be almost exactly twice my height!
Dorothy, WBS's young Andean Condor
Currently Dorothy is
enjoying her days on the display line where you can come and see her between 8
am and 5 pm every day.
Dorothy was hatched here
at World Bird Sanctuary from a breeding pair of Andean Condors that
we had on a breeding loan from the Cincinnati Zoo. Andean Condors mate
for life and during that pair’s 10 year tenure at WBS they raised 6 babies; a
very successful rate considering that in the wild they usually lay only one egg
every 2 years.
Someday soon Dorothy will sport the beautiful plumage and ruff seen here on her mother, Laurel
Dorothy’s five brothers
and sisters were then sent back to Cincinnati Zoo where they were eventually
successfully released back into the wild in western South America, where you
would naturally find them soaring through the air. WBS chose to keep
Dorothy so she could be one of our many ambassadors to educate our guests about
problems birds are having worldwide.
In South America, Andean
Condors are classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. In the
wild they face threats from poisoning and human persecution by farmers, who
believe that the condors are killing their livestock.
Thankfully Dorothy is safe
here at WBS where after hours she is being trained. Hopefully she will star one day in some
of our educational programs. Adam Triska, a staff member at WBS, and
I have recently started working
with her to teach her to go easily into and out of a large crate in case she
would ever need to be moved. We
are also working with her to go to specified targets, much like our White
Pelicans do during some of our programs.
Andean Condors are very
social birds in the wild, where there have been reports of up to 40 condors
feeding from a single carcass. Dorothy looks as if she really enjoys the
company of working with us and doing things correctly. She is also a
quick learner--a sign of high intelligence. She picks up on cues and body
language much faster than many of the other birds.
Here I am teaching Dorothy to go into and out of her crate
Training is going very
well and Dorothy always seems to get excited when she sees us walking towards
her enclosure with our training equipment. So far this is just the
beginning of her training and I find that I look forward to working with her at
the end of each day at WBS.
When you visit the World
Bird Sanctuary be sure to walk down the exhibit line to see Dorothy. You can’t miss her—she’s the REALLY BIG
bird.
Submitted by Mike Cerutti,
World Bird Sanctuary Naturalist/Trainer
2 comments:
Dorothy IS beautiful!!! I would love to see some video of her in action since I now live too far away to visit on a regular basis!!
Thanks for your interest in seeing videos of Dorothy. WBS has a You Tube page featuring many of the birds who reside at the Sanctuary. There are some older videos of Dorothy, and from time to time we post videos of interesting things the birds are doing. Here is the link http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=world+bird+sanctuary&sm=1
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