Griffon Vulture

Voice

Virtually silent in flight. At carcasses and roosts it hisses, grunts and snarls: a hoarse chrrrrr and sharp hissing between squabbling birds. Heard mainly at feeding stations and in the colonies during the breeding season from January to June.

Identification

Huge, with very broad wings, deeply fingered tips and a short square tail that barely projects behind the wings. Soars on flat or slightly raised wings with the hands pushed forward. Sandy body and pale coverts contrast strongly with black flight feathers; white downy ruff, bare pale neck. Juveniles darker with a brown ruff.

Confusion species

Cinereous Vulture: the same size but uniformly dark, with a broader, more rectangular wing, a longer wedge-shaped tail and no contrast between pale coverts and dark flight feathers. Against the light use the head: Cinereous shows a heavy dark head, Griffon a pale slender neck. Lammergeier: much longer pointed wings and a diamond tail.

Habitat

Limestone cliffs and gorges for the colonies, surrounded by extensive livestock country — dehesa, cereal steppe and mountain slopes where stock dies. Ranges tens of kilometres daily and relies on dependable slope lift along ridges and the edge of the meseta.

Range and movements

Iberia is the stronghold — Pyrenees, Ebro valley, Cantabrian mountains, Extremadura and the Andalusian sierras — with further colonies in France, Italy, the Balkans and Turkey. Immatures wander far north; in recent summers parties have appeared regularly in Belgium and the Netherlands.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

April to September, from mid-morning through the heat of the day once thermals are working. Sit at a known colony — Monfragüe, the Hoces del Duratón, the Foz de Arbayún — and watch from the gorge rim, looking down onto soaring birds.

Conservation status

Strongly recovered since legal protection and the reopening of carcass sites after the strict EU rules of the BSE crisis. Continuing threats are illegal poison baits aimed at predators, veterinary anti-inflammatories such as diclofenac in livestock carcasses, collisions with turbines and power lines, and the decline of extensive stock farming.