10/14/2026
In the first week of May 2021, about 15 to 20 California condors landed on a house in Tehachapi, a small city in the mountains of Kern County, and did not leave. They destroyed a spa cover. They knocked over potted plants. They tore up decorative flags and lawn ornaments. They scratched the deck railings and covered every surface in droppings. They perched on the roof, the railing, and the porch furniture. A week later they were still there.
There were roughly 160 California condors flying free in the state at the time. Fifteen to 20 of them were on one deck. That is somewhere around 12 percent of California’s entire wild condor population perched on a single residential property in the Tehachapi Mountains.
The California condor is the largest land bird in North America. Its wingspan reaches 9.5 feet. It weighs up to 25 pounds. In 1987, the species was extinct in the wild. Every condor left on earth, all 22 of them, had been captured and placed in captive breeding programs at the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
The decision to take the last wild birds out of the sky was one of the most controversial calls in conservation history. Some biologists argued that a condor in a cage was no longer a condor. Others argued that a dead condor was less of one. The captive birds bred. The first chicks were released in 1992. By 2021, the total population had grown past 500, with more than 300 flying free across California, Arizona, Utah, and Baja California.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which runs the recovery program, responded to the Tehachapi situation with a statement that managed to be both sympathetic and unhelpful. The house sits in historic condor habitat, the agency noted. Large congregations in certain high-use areas are not unusual, particularly when feeding. Unfortunately, they sometimes perceive houses and decks as suitable perch locations. The recommended response was harmless hazing: shouting, clapping, and spraying water.
The agency’s spokeswoman framed the larger picture. As condors recolonize parts of their historical range, people could increasingly find themselves interacting with a bird that is curious, intelligent, and social. That is the polite version of what happened in Tehachapi. The less polite version is that a species that nearly vanished from the planet has recovered enough that 15 of them can show up at a house in the mountains and tear the deck apart, and the federal government’s advice is to yell at them and use a garden hose.
This is what success looks like when the species weighs 25 pounds and has a 9.5-foot wingspan and no fear of residential architecture. A condor does not recognize a deck railing as private property. It recognizes it as an elevated perch in open terrain with good sight lines and thermal lift from the surrounding ridges. Tehachapi sits at 4,000 feet in a pass between the Sierra Nevada and the Tehachapi Mountains. Condors have been using those thermals for thousands of years. The houses are new. The birds are not.
Image is for illustration purposes only
Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service / Pam Bierce / CBS San Francisco / Associated Press / San Francisco Chronicle / Boston Globe / NBC San Diego.
