Better Than The Zoo?!?

As I'm currently on vacation from work, when the weather is suitable, I'm off out on the Ducati. The weather was nice today, so I decided to head down to Lucia again.

As it is between Christmas and New Year, the roads do have a fair few tourists on them, but it's still fun, particularly once you get south of Big Sur and the tourist traffic thins out.

When I was approaching the normal condor hangout, I started coming across slow traffic and lots of people by the side of the road - I soon realized that there were condors right at the side of the road, so pulled over and joined the masses.

As you can see in the photo below, the birds were close to the road - three or four on the ground and another five or so in a nearby tree.

I'm pretty sure the biologists don't like the birds being this close to humans, but the birds didn't seem to care (and thankfully none of the humans were trying to feed them or anything - I'd have tried to stop that sort of thing if it was occurring).

I've never been this close to them before - the most impressive thing was when one took off, the whooshing sound from the wings was fairly loud!

Thankfully when I came back up the road later on, the crowds had gone. There were no condors by the side of the road, but one flew over me low enough to make me feel like ducking.