News and Stories

Easter eggs aren’t the only eggs we’re looking for this spring!

Our Animal Excellence Science Team has been on the lookout for condor eggs from Gryph and Quechua (pronounced KECH-wa), our Andean condor pair here at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Condors typically breed once a year and females lay only one egg per clutch, so condor chicks are rare. To learn more about condor reproduction, our Animal Excellence Science Team has been spending lots of time watching our condors to see what we can observe about their breeding behaviors.

When condors are ready to breed, they may start displaying and putting on “courtship” dances for each other. In a courtship dance, one condor will bow their head, start slowly walking towards the other, and extend their wings – which can stretch up to ten and a half feet long. The other condor might return the dance or just sit and enjoy the display. Usually, Gryph is the first to start dancing, but Quechua is starting to initiate displays more often! Our Animal Care staff have been providing the condors with lots of places to roost and rest together to provide spaces for them to display to each other. It’s like “dating” for condors!

We’ve also seen both condors spending more time in their nest cave. Condors don’t nest in trees like many other birds do. Instead, they find a sheltered area or cave on a cliff, dig a shallow “bowl” in the ground, and lay their eggs in it. They also “edge-build”, a behavior where they use their beaks to rearrange dirt or sand around themselves to strengthen the egg site. We’ve been seeing lots of edge-building lately! This tells us the pair are displaying more parental and nest-care behaviors, another promising sign that eggs may be on the way soon!

Any eggs produced by Gryph and Quechua would be invaluable to condor conservation. Wild condors are facing an uncertain future, as habitat loss and pesticides have caused their numbers to quickly drop. Condors, like the turkey vultures in our own backyards, are an important part of the ecosystems they live in. They scavenge leftovers other predators leave behind, which helps keep habitats clean and prevent the spread of disease. The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden partners with the Andean Condor Species Survival Plan (SSP) to help raise healthy condors in human care so condors can be re-introduced to the wild in the future.

The next time you’re here at the zoo, swing by Roo Valley to say hi to our condors and ask our Animal Excellence Scientists if they have any “egg-citing” updates to share!