As I have mentioned before, I spend alot of time at the San Diego Wild Animal Park near my home in the San Diego area. The park has a very active California Condor breeding and release program that is contributing to the comeback of these great raptors. Thought I'd show one of the products of this program here. Not many find alot of beauty in the specialized head of carrion eating scavengers, but I can appreciate it here. This is a youngster as evidenced by the grayish down on its head.

George,
excellent portrait of an exquisite -- if not particularly beautiful -- bird. Condors in the air are incredible. But this head-study offers hints of why folks think that they may be the descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Great image.

Jim

George,

You have such a great way of capturing the majesty and beauty of the animals at that Zoo. This one has great color and detail; I had no idea condors had the orange and purples on their faces.

Condors are indeed amazing. About 4 years ago we were driving across Marble Canyon in northern Arizona. Marble Canyon is close to the Vermillion Cliffs which is where they release Condors in AZ. There is a historic bridge that you can walk over Marble Canyon and perched on various rocks beneath the bridge, were 7 condors! We were all stunned - they were each tagged and close enough that you could make out the numbers on their tags. It was an amazing experience - I do not know if they still frequent that location, but we watched them for over an hour. Unfortunately this was before I bought my D80. All I had was a P&S so no good shots. The wingspan on those birds is just incredible.

Anyway - thanks for sharing the great shot.

Dave

Wow that is one ugly critter yet there is something compelling about the shot. The detail is great and it's easy to get lost in just that. Thanks for sharing!

The head has some wonderful colors in it, but what really strikes me for some reason is the lighting on the neck feathers. You make ugly look good =)

Well done Geo! Great image. . .

The colors are terrific on that shot. Nice detail.

That is one EXOTIC photo rich in colours and sharp in quality