California’s condor cam went live on Monday in Big Sur. Condors are a very rare bird with only approximately 429 left living in North America. Of those 429, almost half of them live in captivity at zoos. With this camera, scientists can start monitoring their behaviors to help them from becoming another extinct creature.

It is an incredible sight to be able to see the condors in their natural habitats, and that is what the first-ever condor cam has allowed people to do. The cam is solar-powered and streams live so that the public can see the birds interact, feed, groom, and fly.

“We put the camera right on top of one of the main feeding areas so we could zoom down and get identification of each individual,” said Kelly Sorenson, the executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society. “Over the weekend when we were testing it, we had 25 condors in front of the camera.” The Vantana Wildlife Society is a nonprofit organization that has been working to save the condors from becoming another fascinating animal to become extinct.

The Ventana Wildlife Society’s website gives more of a definition into what their goals are for Californias animals that are currently being threatened of extinction. “In California alone there are 130 species of animals in the wild threatened or endangered with extinction,” the site reads. “Ventana Wildlife Society is committed to conserving native wildlife and their habitats. Rather than dwelling on past mistakes that brought many of our wild animals to the brink, we focus on the present. We recover individual species and track the populations of many others so that conservation can be timely as well as effective.”

To watch the condors you can visit the Ventana Wildlife Society’s website www.ventanaws.org/condor_cam/. They will also update the public when the condors are present on the cam via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

New Condor Cam set to be launched Friday! First ever, live streaming video of condors in the wild! #VWSCondorCam #fb

— Ventana Wildlife Soc (@Ventana_WS) October 16, 2013

Image via Wikimedia Commons