Updated 6 February 2020
This post offers 8 more illustrations of the California condor from books.
The images below represent a wide range of styles. Because the books the images come from were aimed at a variety of audiences, these images were intended to serve a variety of purposes.
The first illustration comes from the online Biodiversity Heritage Library. The rest are from my library. Artists and sources follow each illustration.
All of the artwork below is deserving of consideration.
Artist: Charles B Cory. Source: Cory, Charles B. Beautiful and curious birds of the world. 1883.
Artist: Larry Harris. Source: Harris, Larry. Twilight of the animal kingdom: the endangered species. Ward Ritchie. 1972.
Artist: Uncredited. Source: Mitchell Beazley Publishers, editor. The world atlas of birds. Random House. 1974.
Artist: R M Mengel. Book: Palmer, Ralph S, editor. Handbook of North American birds. Yale University Press. 1988.
Artist: Pauline Hazelwood. Source: Masters, Anthony. Spirit of the condor. Hippo. 1991.
Artist: Helga Boullet Erritzoe. Source: Erritzoe, Johannes. The birds of CITES and how to identify them. Lutterworth. 1993.
Artist: Dugald Stermer. Source: Atlas of the biodiversity of California. California Department of Fish and Game. 2003.
Artist: Laura Cunningham. Source: Cunningham, Laura. A state of change: forgotten landscapes of California. Heyday. 2010.
A note about Dugald Stermer’s artwork above: A different illustration of the California condor by Stermer appears in the March 2006 issue of Boys’ Life magazine. And a substantial set of Stermer’s illustrations of other endangered species were published in the March-April 1980 issue of Communication Arts magazine, a special issue devoted to “Vanishing creatures”. These are all worth a look.
Update:
It is worth noting that Charles Cory’s Beautiful and Curious Birds of the World (above) included just 19 species in addition to his California condor. Among the others are the extinct dodo, great auk, and labrador duck. This information tells us that Cory considered the California condor to be one of the world’s exceptional birds.
Pseudogryps 