Andean Condors of Patagonia

Explanation: Enjoy!

I shot these videos and photographs largely in the Stipa grasslands of Patagonia in interior central and southern Argentina and Chile.

The one scene of a mob of condors feasting on a carcass was shot far across a long valley. The carcass is a guanaco, a relative of the vicuna and llama.

In two previous EPOWs, we saw how California Condors are being brought back from the edge of extinction through captive breeding programs, and some are now flying free in such places as the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Their Andean Condor cousins are likewise threatened by habitat loss, ingestion of poisons, and other factors.

Andean Condor perched on a cliff face along Grey Lake in
Torres del Paine National Park, southern Chile.
This bird is a female, as males sport a head crest
as females do not.

Update: Note that the opening shot in the main video, above -- of
a snowy, wind-swept mountain -- is of the Calbuco volcano in Chile,
just outside the towns of Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt,
just five months before it massively erupted.

EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week