California Condor

North America's largest land bird, rescued from extinction in the wild by captive breeding.

via Wikipedia: California condor · see source

The California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) is a New World vulture and the largest land bird in North America, with a 3.0 m wingspan and a weight of up to 14 kg. A scavenger that feeds on carrion, it can live for up to 60 years. The species vanished from the wild in 1987, when every remaining free bird was captured for breeding, and it has since been released again in California, Arizona, Utah and northern Baja California. It is still listed as critically endangered and ranks among the rarest birds in the world.

Quick Facts

Genus: Gymnogyps
Species: californianus

Facts from the source article.

Background

English naturalist George Shaw described the bird in 1797 from a specimen Archibald Menzies collected on the California coast during the Vancouver Expedition. It was first grouped with the Andean condor but now sits alone in the genus Gymnogyps, whose name means bare vulture. That genus was once spread across the Americas during the Pleistocene, and several extinct relatives are known from fossils, including Gymnogyps amplus from the La Brea Tar Pits. The word condor itself comes from the Quechua word kuntur. The bird is important to many Californian Native American groups and appears in several of their traditional myths.