Like the Burying Beetle and the Vulture, the California Condor works at preserving our country’s fragrance, while utilizing the dead in the cycle of life. But when the news got out, around 1900, that our largest bird was scarce, collectors made him scarcer. Others killed him merely for pastime. Aerodynamic poet laureate and one-time coast-to-coast traveler, he is now confined to Sespe Wildlife Reserve near Los Angeles, where about sixty Condors are carefully protected from civilization.
