Baby condor born at Pinnacles - and you can see the nest!

Birth announcement! A condor has been born at Pinnacles National Monument. For anyone who has followed the saga of the condor, this is exciting news. This is the 49th chick to be born in the wild since the program began, good progress for the  program.

Perhaps most exciting for fellow Bay Area travelers is that the nest is visible to hikers at Pinnacles. That's a rare treat.

The California condor is a huge, prehistoric-looking bird that almost went extinct, but is slowly being revived through captive breeding and releases in protected areas that are part of its historical territory.

The condor program has been expensive, controversial, and difficult. Some staunch environmentalists opposed it from the beginning, because the program required capturing the last of the free, wild condors in order to create a captive breeding program that would eventually get the condors back into the wild. There's no doubt that without that drastic step, the condor would have died out by now.

The greatest risks to the condor currently come from lead poisoning. So if you happen to be a hunter, please, for the sake of condors (and your family, assuming you eat the game), don't use lead bullets. There are alternatives. But that's another story.

If you'd like to make the trek to Pinnacles, be sure to take your binoculars, and stop in at the visitor's center to ask directions. The nest is visible from Scout Peak bench on the High Peaks Trail. It's only a two mile hike in, but it's strenuous, with 1100 - 1200 feet elevation gain depending on whether you approach from the east or the west. Note that the area immediately around the nest is closed to visitors for the time being.

Happy baby bird watching!