462 ORNITHOLOGICAL SKETCHES 
TE: 
THE GRIFFON VULTURE 
(Vultur fulvus). 
Iy my paper on the Cinereous Vulture I devoted a few words 
to the interesting Griffon Vulture, but I have since had many 
more and much better opportunities of seeing this grand bird 
in a state of freedom. I do not, however, even now pretend 
to furnish an exhaustive treatise on this widely distributed 
species, but simply feel impelled to communicate the results of 
my observations in order to furnish materials for other 
naturalists. 
The Griffon Vulture is the most generally and most widely 
distributed of all the European members of its group. It is 
found breeding in the southern provinces of our native 
country, and during migration it visits all parts of the 
kingdom, perhaps even more frequently than one imagines. 
In Slavonia, Transylvania, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and especially 
in the Herzegovina it is considered one of the commonest 
birds. Barren rocky mountains are among the chief requi- 
sites for its frequent occurrence, but woods it does not 
frequent, though it does not so scrupulously shun them as 
most naturalists have hitherto maintained. The brothers 
Sintenis found it breeding on trees, and I also know of an 
instance where a pair of these birds nested on a pine-tree in 
the midst of a large forest in Slavonia. These occurrences 
are, however, quite exceptional, and the Cinereous Vulture 
may be met with in the forests of Slavonia and the other 
regions of the Lower Danube much more frequently than 
the Griffon Vulture; the latter, indeed, is but rarely to be 
seen. 
