Griffon Vulture Status (1 Viewer)

What is the position with Griffon vultures in Portugal?

I was at Cabo de Sao Vicente last Thursday and at lunchtime I was about halfway along the track to Vila do Bispo when I got my eye on a massive group of large birds a couple of miles or so to the north, rising on a thermal. What were they? Black Kites? - No, surely they should be away by now. I got the scope out and I was amazed to see they were griffon vultures so I banged off a few shots with my 400mm. I guessed that there must be about 300, but I've just counted 308 in the original of the shot below which shows part of the flock, so I think that a truer figure would be "up to 400".

I had a drive around the Bispo area just afterwards, but there was not a sign of a vulture and I didn't see where they got to when they rose. There is a large wooded valley north-west of Bispo, running down to the coast. Could this have been a communal roost from there rising on a mid-day thermal?

BWPi shows a breeding population for Portugal of about 270 pairs in 1999, so they aren't particularly numerous.

What was this flock of about 400 birds doing all in one place on the coast?

I am certainly no expert but I thought the Sagres penisula was known as a migration point. So were these migrating down to Africa? There is a report here http://www.eurobirding.com/birdingmagazines/artinfo.php?id=8845 of French birds migrating to Sengal and West Africa.

See also here: http://aves.team-forum.net/birds-of-portugal-in-english-f10/griffon-vulture-migration-t1305.htm for descriptions of the same phenomenon you have seen.

It could well be the same thing as is discussed there.

Thanks Alan

It was one hell of a sight, wherever they came from.

The occurrence is common, the numbers of griffons in Portugal have increased in the last decade and area now higher than the numbers in 1999, also some of the birds in Sagres are Spanish.

Thanks Pedro. I've done a bit of research on them since I posted this and I find that the Sagres vultures often number 600 at this time of year. I'd not heard of this before.

It's an impressive sight.