Interest in the California condor has long extended beyond the borders of the USA. In this post I consider 4 magazine articles that were published in Europe during the 20th century.
The translations below are the product of web translators and my very limited knowledge of the 4 languages involved.
Author V. Forbin’s article “Quatre Mois Chez les Condors en Californie” appears in the 11 April 1908 issue of L’Illustration.
The article title translates from the French as “Four Months with California Condors”.
Here is the first sentence followed by a translation:
Une passion très ardente pour la science, et aussi, sans doute, un penchant de race pour les aventures qui entrainent quelques risques ont fait entreprende à un naturaliste american une expédition assez peu banale.
A very ardent passion for science, and also, no doubt, a penchant for adventures that entail some risks have made an American naturalist undertake a rather unusual expedition.
That naturalist was William L. Finley, an important figure in the California condor saga. Several photographs taken by Finley and his collaborator Herman T. Bohlman accompany the article, including this one:
Another photo shows both Finley and Bohlman in search of a condor’s nest (leaving me to wonder who was behind the camera):
Notably, Forbin’s article was printed on high-quality, and still very white, paper. This was bound in the center of the magazine issue, the rest of which was printed on a lower-quality, and now yellowed paper.
This photo is from the inside back cover of the September 1971 issue of Der Falke:
On the facing page is author Heinrich Dathe’s text for what appears to be a regular feature of the magazine. The article title translates from the German as “Our Bird Atlas: 69. Californian Condor”.
Der Falke translates, not surprisingly, as “The Falcon”. But I have also seen “Falke” translated as “hawk”. This magazine was published in the former East Germany by a firm identified as a press for popular science literature.
The Swedish Fauna och Flora describes itself as a “popular journal of biology published by the Swedish Museum of Natural History, supported by the Swedish National Science Council”.
The May 1986 issue of Fauna och Flora includes author Keister Brood’s “Den sista kaliforniakondoren?”. Below is the accompanying English-language summary, beginning with a translation of the article’s title.
The article is accompanied by a photo of a stuffed and mounted California condor specimen in the Swedish Museum of Natural History:
The January-February 1988 issue of the Dutch magazine Dieren includes the article “Dierentuinen helpen: de Californische Condor” by L. E. M. de Boer and R. H. R. Belterman.
In English, the magazine’s title is “Animals” and the article’s title is “Zoos Help: The California Condor”.
Six photos by Belterman accompany the article and are evidence that this photographer visited the Los Angeles Zoo. Here’s one of the photos:
Complete translations of these 4 magazine articles will have to wait for another day. But even without knowing the details of their contents, the articles demonstrate the long-standing and widespread interest in the California condor.
Pseudogryps 