The Tryst

They met in secret, deep in the woods of northern California for their tryst. The affair’s secrecy lasted a mere nine months. The results were, surprisingly enough, unexpected but thrilling just the same. It was only the third unobserved pairing of condors in the wild documented in the last 18 years. The offspring ( a single hatchling) was approximately nine months old at the time of its discovery by happy wildlife biologists. The last 27 California condors left in the wild in 1987 were captured and placed in a breeding program. In 1997 wildlife biologists began releasing them in Big Sur. The California condor is one of the world's rarest bird species and as of June 2014 there were about 400 condors living wild or in captivity.