Remember the two year old female condor who was released in Arizona last March and then spotted in Wyoming four months later? I wrote about T2 who spent several days in early July 2018 perched in the Snowy Range and then died.
Unfortunately, the condor known as T2 was found dead days after leaving its perch on July 9. The Peregrine Fund — the organization that released her into the wild — can’t say what caused the giant bird’s demise. It’s under investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But the mystery of what made her fly more than 440 miles from her release site only adds to the long and storied tale of the California condor.
The necropsy results for T2 released a few days ago show that her death was due to natural causes, not something humans did such as lead poisoning, powerline collision, or intentional shooting.
LHW: Once this condor made it to Wyoming it died, and there was a lot of concern over the reason it died. Why was it taken so seriously? What were those concerns?
BW: I think people were worried, first off, that maybe something man-made resulted in its death. Some of the other introduced birds have hit powerlines. There [were] no records of anyone hitting it with a car, I think somebody would notice if they hit a condor with a car. But, you know, what if it flew into a fence line? I think people were worried that something we did here in Wyoming caused this bird to die. And because it was only the second record… And really when the call went out that she was there, people were so excited that she was. I think a lot of our hopes were that she would fly out of the state, grow up and then come back and maybe visit us again. We were worried [something] man-made was the cause of her death, and it turns out wasn't. Something to do with her neurological system they think went wrong.
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We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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T2 is staying in Wyoming, making her permanent mark in the world of condor natural history. The University of Wyoming Museum of Vertebrates obtained permission from USFWS to keep her as a specimen.
...people can come here and they can study how large and what shape a California condor wing looks like compared to other birds of prey that come here in Wyoming. They can look at her bone structure. How is her skull different than say, like a red-tailed hawk or a turkey vulture? School students can come and do art projects associated with her. Genetic researchers can come and ask us for a subsample of tissues. So essentially her life after death will probably never stop.
RIP T2 — you made the most of your four wild months!
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reading through the comments to my 11 july 2018 Daily bucket on t2 in wyoming was poignant. i was still in my paradise home and had just seen the deer with weird antlers.
i never expected that an odd but insignificant observation i shared in the daily bucket would become my unreproducible historic record for that day and that place.
Now it’s your turn to share observations that mark time and place in the your world.