Condors make a meal of a beached gray whale.

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Pointing at the remains of the sea otter, Burnett sees the picked-over corpse as evidence of the success of VWS’ efforts to reintroduce the condor to its native habitat. “It’s a big step for them,” he says. “It seems they are getting closer to self-sustaining.”

He motions towards a bluff that blocks our beach passing and tells me that after climbing up and over the obstacle we will be on the beach with the whale carcass and, possibly, the condors.

After sliding down the far side of the sandy slope, which is covered by ice plant and fragrant sage, we arrive on a long beach with a rocky arm-like point on the far side. Burnett pulls out a high-powered spotting scope and observes a juvenile condor flying away and a mature condor perched in an unexpected place: on the makeshift blind that Burnett and I were going to hide behind to observe the birds feeding on the whale.

Following a few minutes of peering at the older condor through the scope, the huge animal takes off, using thermals to corkscrew up into the sky. “I think we arrived after they had breakfast,” Burnett observes.

Though we will not be able to watch the condor feasting on the whale meat buffet, both Burnett and I are excited that we are able to get a view of the bird. Last week, Burnett and a film crew from Animal Planet spent two days in the blind and didn’t see a single condor.

As the condor flies in and out of a wispy patch of fog located above the lumpy rock point, Burnett notices the giant bird is swinging out over the ocean. “It’s pretty unusual,” he says. “He’s going way out over that point. It’s pretty bold. I’ve never seen that.”

Eventually, we start walking towards the whale carcass, while the condor continues its ascent far overhead. Looking up into the ocean of blue sky, I see the bird’s white underside and claw-like wing edges.

We get to the whale carcass, and its wrinkled, red, waxy skin looks like a sagging tarp thrown over some hulking, hidden frame. It lies on the beach almost 40 feet long with its tail curled up, so that it resembles the letter “j.”  Some of its skin is torn back to reveal some flesh that almost looks like wood.

The smell of something that big decomposing is horrendous. Burnett aptly says the stench is probably similar to what one would get from leaving a dead fish in a hot car for a couple of weeks.