When photographer Karine Aigner got the text that the California Condor egg was hatching, she dropped everything and drove straight from High Island, Texas, to the Houston airport. Before long she was sitting next to the incubator at Liberty Wildlife in Arizona, watching as the fragile life it contained began to break out of its shell. “It was like being at a maternity ward,” she says. She looked up from her lens to see the key staff who had cared for the egg giddy, shedding tears, mouths agape. “It felt hilarious and heartwarming and sobering all at the same time.” There was a lot of hope riding on that little condor. Just several hundred members of her species remain, and avian flu killed 21 of them this year—including the chick’s mother. To prevent the bird from imprinting on humans, Aigner chronicled her first weeks of life with utmost caution. She captured this issue’s cover using a remote camera positioned at a 3/4-inch peephole in the wall looking into a nest...