It was simply earlier than 5 within the morning. The páramo, and the sky above, had been nonetheless lit solely by 1000’s of stars. Excessive within the Ecuadorian Andes, the nights are chilly. And the truth that the equator lies simply 50 kilometers away modifications nothing about that. Right here, on the Earth’s longest line of latitude, life follows a strict routine: The solar rises at six o’clock within the morning and units twelve hours later, each single day of the yr. For these twelve hours, the solar reigns supreme within the sky. The one creature able to eclipsing its brilliance is the Andean Condor.
This big of the avian world has impressed reverence in folks since time immemorial. Pre-Columbian cultures revered it as a vital a part of their mythology. For the Inca folks, the condor was a sacred fowl, a messenger connecting the higher world with the earthly realm. Its huge determine can nonetheless be seen within the well-known Nazca traces. And as we speak, its broad-winged silhouette adorns the coats of arms of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and even Venezuela, the place the species now teeters on the sting of extinction. In a lot of South America, it stays a nationwide fowl.
Not that each one our traditions are constructive for the condor. It saddens me that even now, in the event you occur to be in components of southern Peru in July, you may bump into a Yawar Fiesta, or “Blood Competition.” A fairly brutal custom through which a wild-caught condor, symbolizing the Inca folks, is force-fed alcohol and tied to the again of a bull, representing the Spanish conquistadors. A matador then provokes each terrified animals right into a wrestle in an enviornment or the city sq.. If the condor survives, it’s let out, although after all, it doesn’t at all times.
However this isn’t a narrative about folks. Let’s return to the wild, free condors.
That morning, with the celebrities clear overhead, we set out after these majestic birds within the mattress of a pickup truck. Our digital camera backpacks and tripods jostled round at our ft as we bounced by the predawn chill. Our vacation spot was a 250-meter-high cliff lining the northeastern shore of Lake Secas, not removed from the snow-covered Antisana Volcano (5,753 m). By the point our pickup reached the muddy monitor by the grassy páramo slopes, the sky was starting to pale.
Not removed from the cliff, in a sea of wind-blown grass, the truck got here to a cease. The highway ended right here. Earlier than us stretched huge views of a sparsely populated farming panorama, high-altitude páramo, and surrounding volcanoes. Sincholagua, Atacazo, Pasochoa, and a string of different peaks towering nicely above 4,000 meters framed a pure amphitheater, the place—at any second now—the efficiency we had traveled midway all over the world to see would start.
At daybreak, the Andean Condors, having spent the evening on inaccessible rocky ledges, would take to the air on their each day seek for meals. On wings that may span as much as 3.3 meters, they soar for hours, scanning the panorama with eager eyes for the carcasses they depend on. Due to the immense floor space of their wings—unmatched within the avian world—they will cowl a whole lot of kilometers in a day, usually with no single wingbeat, using thermal currents and mountain winds.
But, regardless of their measurement, condors can simply slip from human sight in these huge mountains. And in the event you’re fortunate sufficient to identify them in your travels, odds are they’ll seem as tiny specks, drifting from one valley to the following. To really see them up shut, at eye degree, you should catch them at daybreak as they depart their roosts or at nightfall after they return.
The dew-soaked páramo grass clung to our trousers as we pushed our approach by it. Ecuadorian Hillstars and Black Flowerpiercers had been already busy sipping nectar from the orange blossoms of Chuquiragua shrubs. A slender path led us alongside a small ridge to the very fringe of the cliff, ending at a trampled patch of earth that dropped off into sheer rock. Close by, a stream cascaded right into a waterfall under us. A misplaced step right here, and the condors wouldn’t have to go looking far for his or her subsequent meal.
We hadn’t even unpacked our cameras or prolonged our tripods when the primary grownup condor swept previous us. It was shut—lower than twenty meters away. On this mystical panorama, it regarded each bit the legend it’s. It slid by the air with grace and dignity, skimming the cliff’s edge earlier than disappearing behind us. The white panels on its wings etched themselves into our reminiscence, although sadly not onto a reminiscence card.
A number of extra condors had evidently left earlier than dawn, and the realm not had the themes we had been hoping to {photograph}. A few years in the past, a buddy of mine put it nicely: “Out right here, it’s both the birds or the sunshine—you hardly ever get each.”
And so it was this morning. A handful of condors nonetheless circled excessive overhead, nevertheless it was solely a matter of time earlier than the strengthening thermals would carry them off seeking one thing freshly deceased. And photographing black silhouettes in opposition to the sky? Not a lot room for artistic composition there.
What might we do? We’d misplaced this spherical, and so we returned with our playing cards empty. However already, behind my thoughts, a plan for a rematch was taking form. It appeared to me that the stream close to us, which changed into a waterfall under, might turn out to be a wonderful backdrop at sundown. It was within the good spot to obtain the final rays of the solar—so, too, was the cliff on which we now stood. We merely wanted to discover a spot from which to {photograph} it.
So, we adjusted our plan. By three o’clock, we had been as soon as once more standing on the mattress of a pickup, crawling up the acquainted highway towards the highest of the cliff. This time, as an alternative of organising close to the waterfall, we determined to go a bit farther. It solely took a few jumps over slender creeks, a cautious crossing of soggy patches, and a little bit of weaving by low shrubs to succeed in a distinct vantage level additional alongside the U-shaped cliff.
What we noticed from the brand new overlook took our breath away. Because the bushes parted, an enchanted world opened up beneath us. It felt like we’d stumbled into The Lord of the Rings. We had been now virtually instantly reverse the waterfall, standing on the tip of a rocky outcrop. The sense of depth and isolation was magnified by the truth that we had been on a type of peninsula, surrounded on three sides by a sheer abyss. The view alone would have been spectacular, even when there hadn’t been a single condor or fowl in sight. However there was!
We had arrived simply in time. A number of condors had been already perched on the cliffside ledges. For a second, I feared the present is perhaps over, however fortunately I used to be incorrect. One younger condor was utilizing the mist of the waterfall as a pure bathe, repeatedly diving into the cascading spray after which drying its soaked feathers within the solar, wings outstretched like an awesome, sun-drenched cross.
Throughout us, smaller raptors often called Carunculated Caracaras crammed the sky. At one level, I counted virtually twenty of them wheeling overhead—a quantity I had by no means seen collectively earlier than! These mountain acrobats share the high-altitude panorama with the condors and, like them, had come to choose the rocky ledges for the evening. They flew very in another way from the condors: speedy wingbeats, with sudden modifications of course and altitude. It was a full of life distinction to the regular, majestic glide of the Andean kings.
Together with them, a big Black-chested Buzzard-Eagle, a barely smaller juvenile Variable Hawk, and a tiny American Kestrel streaked previous our elevated lookout. It was as if the Andes themselves had been making an attempt to make up for the morning’s letdown by providing up every thing from their raptor arsenal. 5 species of birds of prey at 3,700 meters? That’s one thing you’ll discover solely right here, within the tropical Andes.
Two condors, doubtless a mom along with her grown offspring, exchanged mild touches. By the best way, parental care lasts an exceptionally very long time in condors. Incubation of a single egg takes practically two months, and the chick then stays on the nest for one more half-year earlier than it’s even able to flight. Mother and father proceed to care for his or her offspring till about two years of age, when their consideration shifts to the following egg, and the entire cycle begins once more.
As fascinating because it was to observe the condors perched on the cliffs, the true emotion ignites after they unfold their monstrous wings and take to the air. There’s one thing about their flight that makes it virtually not possible to look away. Within the human observer, it stirs some historic, atavistic mixture of admiration and reverence. Watching a condor in flight awakens the identical primal chord because the crackling of a fireplace or the roar of a waterfall. There’s one thing uncooked, elemental, virtually prehistoric about it. No surprise the Inca positioned these airborne giants amongst their pantheon of gods.
A thought crossed my thoughts. The younger birds I used to be photographing—simply acknowledged by their general brown plumage—will doubtless nonetheless be hovering these skies years after I’m gone. Andean Condors, along with massive parrots and albatrosses, belong among the many longest-living birds on this planet. Some people can stay so long as a human. In the event that they handle to keep away from poisoning from lead bullets in animal carcasses, heavy metals, or pesticides, they haven’t any pure predators in maturity. They need to nonetheless be right here to witness the world many many years from now.
We frequently lack a correct sense of scale when watching birds gliding by the sky. It’s onerous to inform if a fowl is small or just distant. However with a condor, it’s a distinct story. Its motion, mixed with the silhouette of its wingtips barely upturned in a fan-like curve, hints at its true measurement. Much more so when it flies instantly towards you, steadily rising in your viewfinder, till its huge wings spill past the body, and you end up staring into the curious eyes of a fowl that confidently soars previous you, absolutely conscious of its dominion over this historic panorama.
We spent about three hours on that cliff. Time had by no means flown quicker. The solar steadily sank someplace behind the Atacazo volcano on the far aspect of the extensive Inter-Andean valley. At one level, it slipped behind a big cloud, the sunshine dimmed, and it appeared as if it was time to pack up the cameras and filter out. However between the decrease fringe of the cloud and the horizon, there remained a slender hole, hinting that if we had been fortunate, the solar may break by one final time.
And so it did.
For a short second, the panorama round us was bathed in beautiful golden mild. Sunbeams streaming from beneath the cloud’s edge illuminated the rocky peaks and the pasture the place cows had been slowly making their approach residence after a day of grazing. To finish the scene, three Caracaras appeared above the horizon.
Greater than at every other second that day, this was the time to modify the publicity to full guide. The wings of the passing Caracaras and condors, catching the solar’s last rays, stood in stark distinction to the valley under, already surrendering to the rule of evening. The sunshine throughout these 15 or half-hour was nothing in need of good.
Pictures right here was removed from straightforward. Many of the condors had already settled onto their night perches, leaving the skies round us to the Caracaras. They moved like unruly kids resisting bedtime, their exercise peaking in a frantic, chaotic burst. At instances, it was genuinely tough to lock onto a single fowl. When a Caracara flew into the shadow, each the autofocus and my very own eye struggled to trace it. However as quickly because it rose into the final daylight, its wings blazed in opposition to the darkened backdrop like a phoenix reborn.
All the time, I’d been hoping to seize a Condor or a Caracara flying in entrance of the waterfall. Particularly now, in these final valuable minutes of daylight! And simply earlier than I gave up, one other younger Caracara swooped by. I caught it within the viewfinder, tracked it, and because it approached the waterfall, I pressed the shutter. At that actual second, an grownup joined in, they usually met proper in entrance of the falling curtain of water. Then the second vanished.
I had a sense that, simply earlier than the 2 birds appeared in entrance of the waterfall, I hadn’t targeted correctly. My coronary heart was pounding as I scrolled by your complete burst, body by body.
Out of focus. Out of focus. Out of focus.
After which—there it was. On the exact second the younger Caracara unfold its sunlit wings, the autofocus of my Z9 discovered its footing once more, and I nailed the shot.
That is what I like about pictures—particularly fowl pictures. That sense of rigidity, complete focus, and the flood of reward when every thing clicks into place. It’s nothing greater than the traditional hunter inside me. And actually, what might be extra satisfying than fulfilling some deep, prehistoric want? Once more, one thing uncooked, one thing primal, just like the Condor itself.
A couple of minutes later, the solar slipped under the horizon, and all of us who had spent these final hours up on the cliff started to float again. Not bodily—that might come quickly sufficient—however mentally. You possibly can see it on everybody’s faces: we had all simply skilled one thing genuinely uncommon. It felt as if we had been waking from a dream.
It was time to depart. The attractive purple glow of the land blinked out, the solar’s last mild mirrored by scattered clouds. And to high all of it off, it felt as if we’d stepped again a number of many years—or possibly even centuries—in time.
Subsequent to our pickup truck stood a pair of horses, and beside them, two cowhands, father and son. Whereas the daddy had spent the afternoon with us, the son had been tasked with roping and saddling the horses. Now, within the rapidly falling tropical evening, each of them disappeared into the ocean of swaying grass on the Andean páramo. Good evening, Andes.