California condors are the largest flying animals in North America, with wingspans that can stretch to 10 feet and weights that tip the scale at 25 pounds. This condor zooms over a ridge in the remote Topatopa Mountains, northwest of Los Angeles. Notice the antennas on the wings that transmit data to biologists.

State and federal governemnt protection brought the condors back from the brink of extinction. From about 15 birds in 1980, now more than one hundred condors populate our earth, with scores of them soaring into the skies above Califorina, Baja California (Mexico), and Arizona.