Boy’s photo proves return of the condor

LOS ANGELES – Like any good bird-lover, Gabriel Gottfried knew what to do when he spied the huge creature perched on a tree branch outside his Topanga Canyon home.

He grabbed his camera to document what experts say may be the first California condor to fly the canyon’s skies in more than 100 years.

His action photo of the elusive bird taking wing was remarkable enough.

But perhaps not as remarkable as the fact that Gabriel is 5 years old.

“I’m five-and-a-half!” corrects the pint-sized photographer whose sharp eye and quick shutter finger are being saluted by conservationists throughout the rustic residential canyon.

Wildlife experts who are hailing Gabriel’s photo say it’s conceivable that a condor was taking temporary refuge from a huge wildfire that ravaged parts of the Los Padres National Forest in September and October.

The forest’s Sespe Condor Sanctuary and adjoining Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge is where captive-bred condors have been released in an attempt to reintroduce them to the wilds. Topanga Canyon is within easy soaring range of the condor preserves.

Federal wildlife officials say the condors dispersed when the fire approached their sanctuary areas.

All have since returned, Denise Stockton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Wednesday.

Stockton and others have studied Gabriel’s photo in hopes of identifying the bird. But the silhouetted image is too dark to show identifying features or the numbers attached to all condors in the breeding program, she said.

“It’s amazing,” Stockton said of the child’s handiwork.

The photograph depicts the giant bird – its head hunkered down and its powerful wings flexing – as it launches itself from a pine tree across the street from Gabriel’s house.

Gabriel photographed the prehistoric-looking creature about a month ago after coming home from kindergarten.

When his nanny, Mayra Flores, commented on the big bird in the tree, Gabriel dashed to a hallway shelf where he keeps the digital point-and-shoot camera that his mother gave him. Just as he aimed it through his bedroom window, the bird took off.

“I’d never seen that kind of bird before,” says Gabriel.

Living on the upper-most northern ridge of the canyon, the boy is plenty familiar with its winged inhabitants. Red-tailed hawks are common. A great horned owl lives in one neighbor’s tree. Hummingbirds flutter among vines and wildflowers on the hillsides. Once, his parents, Mary Benjamin and Rick Gottfried, had to rescue a woodpecker from inside the family dwelling.

“I don’t use film. I use memory,” Gabriel says, explaining the photo technology. Demonstrating how he aimed the camera through the bedroom window, he talks of his photographic technique.

“I tried to take it on the tree, but it moved. I followed it by accident and got it in midair. My dad helped me get the picture out of the camera and into the printer.”

Benjamin, a documentary film producer, purchased the inexpensive Kodak digital camera for Gabriel after the expense of supplying him with disposable film cameras to take snapshots grew too high.