Wild condor<\/a> parents usually make a great parenting team. But when one female California condor<\/a> (Gymnogyps californianus) in Pinnacles National Park in Central California found herself in the role of a single mother, park biologists stepped in to help.<\/p>\n The condor mother wasn\u2019t able to provide sufficient care and food for her chick while on her own. Field biologists realized that when hunting for food, she returned to the nest less frequently. The chick needed more nutrition to grow and develop appropriately.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBased on her behavior, she had largely abandoned the nest, and the chick was unlikely to survive without intervention,\u201d a spokesperson for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance<\/a> tells Popular Science.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pinnacles National Park biologists took the chick when it was around one month old and sent him to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park\u2019s California condor breeding facility. There, he\u2019s receiving care in a specialized puppet-rearing<\/a> program.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t \n\t\t\t\tCondor chick rescue\t\t\t<\/p>\n \u201cThe puppet-rearing program is a specialized care method used to raise young California condor chicks without allowing them to see or bond with human caretakers,\u201d says the spokesperson. \u201cWildlife care specialists use hand-crafted puppets that resemble adult California condors and completely cover the caretaker\u2019s hands and arms. Caretakers use the puppet\u2019s beak to deliver food directly to the chick, mimicking the way an adult condor parent would feed its young in the nest.\u201d<\/p>\n The chick was named Cayic (pronounced Chai-eech), meaning \u201cstrong\u201d in the Mutsun language of the Indigenous people of California\u2019s Central Coast. Thankfully, Cayic is demonstrating normal growth and development, and experts plan on returning him to the wild next fall.California condors are still considered critically endangered,<\/a> after nearly going extinct.<\/p>\n As for the chick\u2019s father, he had stopped returning to the nest and eventually died while receiving treatment for suspected lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is the greatest cause of death for California condors and a severe obstacle in the species\u2019 recovery. The species is also threatened by the consumption of microtrash.\u00a0<\/p>\n California condors, or \u201cthunderbirds\u201d for Native Americans, are North America\u2019s largest flying birds. Their wingspan is almost ten feet long, but their mighty reach didn\u2019t keep them from reaching the brink of extinction. During the 1980s, there were fewer than two dozen of them in the wild. In 1986, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put them all in a captive breeding and release program, including at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Six years later, the program had bred enough chicks<\/a> to return the first condors to the wild.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Condor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789224731_444_hqdefault.jpg\"\/)
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