Oregon Zoo chick swap tricks endangered condors

PORTLAND — Keepers at the Oregon Zoo have pulled off a California condor chick trick.

An inexperienced pair of the endangered condors got rough with a freshly hatched chick last weekend, and keeper Kelli Walker rushed to the rescue, grabbed the chick out of the nest and brought it to a veterinary clinic.

Walker tells The Oregonian she never usually would have done something so dramatic, but every chick counts with the condors, which were nearly lost to extinction in the 1980s.

The zoo’s captive breeding program had an older pair of condors incubating a dummy egg as insurance. So the next day, Walker replaced the dummy egg with the newly hatched condor and its real, broken egg.

The foster parents warmly welcomed their new chick.