Griffon vulture

Where the tracked griffon vultures are now

Each dot is one tagged bird's most recent position.

About griffon vultures

A bird with a wingspan approaching 2.7 metres, riding thermals without a single wingbeat and covering 300 to 400 km in a day, is not something the flat countries were built to expect. Yet almost every year now, in late May and June, young griffon vultures drift up from Spain and France and turn up over the Netherlands and Germany — nearly all of them under four years old, too young to breed, pushed away from the carcass by parents feeding chicks back home.

How griffon vultures migrate

No griffon vultures breed in Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium, so there is no local migration route to describe. The birds seen here are non-breeding immatures from the south: of nine ringed individuals identified in the Netherlands, seven came from Spain and one each from Italy and southern France, with the nearest colonies some 700 km away. They appear mainly in the second half of May and June, stay days or weeks, and drift south again; there are no Dutch winter records at all, so this is a summer overshoot rather than a migration. The species' real long-distance movement happens further south and only in part of the population: of 127 tracked fledglings in south-western Europe, about 40% crossed to Africa in their first autumn to winter in Senegambia, while the other 60% simply stayed in Iberia — and the stay-at-homes fared better, with migrants suffering markedly higher first-year mortality from power lines and turbines.

Key facts

Length

93–110 cm

Wingspan

230–270 cm

Leaves

Birds reaching north-west Europe are gone by mid-October; true migrants further south leave from mid-October to early December

Returns

Appears over the Netherlands and Germany mainly in the second half of May and June

Winters in

Not in north-west Europe — there are no Dutch winter records. About 40% of first-year birds winter in the Sahel; the rest stay in Iberia

Changing habits

From exceptional vagrant to near-annual visitor: the Netherlands has averaged 27 birds a year since 1997, and Germany saw one of its strongest influxes in years in June 2026

Population

34,800–44,700 pairs in Europe, 84% of them in Spain. None breeding in Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium

Is migration happening right now?

Weather radar over the Benelux and Germany measures how many birds are aloft, updated every five minutes. See it for Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany, or watch every tagged bird on the live map.