Skip Barber Superbike School

I recently attended the Skip Barber Superbike School representing Soup - here's the write up from Soup:

Day 1
Day 2

Cheating Condors?

Saturday morning dawned bright, damp and chilly, but given that it was Easter weekend, early morning was my time to get out and practice some of the techniques I'd learned at Superbike School (post coming soon) earlier in the week before the inevitable tourists clogged the roads. I was on the road by 8:30am.

The ride down Big Sur was chilly and I stopped at the normal condor hangout to warm up as much as I was looking for condors. No condors, but my hands were soon warmed on the crankcases of the Ducati. Down to Lucia for a chocolate milk and a dark chocolate bounty bar (or Mounds as they're called here in the US). It had warmed up a bit on my way back up, though the roads were still damp in places, and thankfully the traffic hadn't gotten too heavy going north.

I stopped again at the normal condor spot. As it was still early-ish (about 10:30am or so by this stage), I hung around for longer than I normally would without any condor action - and my patience paid off - I spotted a condor down near the sea lion colony below. It slowly made its way up to my level about 400 feet above sea level, via a couple of stopping points.

It made one close pass to me (after buzzing some unsuspecting tourists at the next pullout - aka layby - they never noticed this 9 foot wingspan bird just above their heads) - and headed off towards the house at Grimes Point. After it didn't return, I headed off towards the house on foot.

When I got half way between where I'd parked and the house, I could see the condor in the top of a tree. Again, after some patience on my part (it was warming up nicely now - I wasn't complaining), the bird moved around the trees. Just as I was about to give up for the day, one, two, three then four condors appeared overhead - this looked like it could get good - little did I know at this stage how good.

A couple of the four dropped a bit lower than the others, then one landed in the dead tree above the pullout I was near. Then a second landed in the same tree and it appeared they were a little more than friendly, but I figured it was anthropomorphism on my part. Soon the birds left the tree one after another and soon chased the original bird away from the house. They they disappeared from view, but I could see folks in the pullout at the house busy looking at something, so I made my way close to that pullout (which I was wary of, as it meant I lost site of the Ducati, my helmet, gloves, binoculars and back pack - and although I did have the Ducati key with me, nothing else was secured - though I always assume, hopefully not naively, that thieves won't be thinking of the Big Sur coast as a good place to commit crimes in the first place).

I got close to the house and realized the two condors were mating. I took a few photos then ran up the road (in full motorcycle gear minus the helmet) to get to the pullout nearest the birds. Thankfully condor mating isn't that quick, so I got there and managed to get some full frame photos of what I presume is a pretty rare thing to capture on (digital) film. The bonus was that the light was really nice and soft and behind me, I couldn't have staged the whole thing better from a photography point of view.

The one bad aspect to all this is that I'd previously read that condors mate for life, and that both of these condors had previously mated with other condors - but not each other. After reviewing tags on my photos it was apparent that the male's previous mate, with whom he'd raised a chick, was one of the other birds that made up the four that had appeared overhead.

Again, it may be anthropomorphism on my part that is classifying these two as cheaters, but the whole mating for life thing doesn't seem to hold much water. I hope to get the Ventana biologists' point of view on all this at some stage.

For now, here's some photos from the day from my Facebook account.