FROM SPAIN. 463 



The Griffon Vulture is now carrying out one of those 

 great migratory movements observable in the case of so many 

 representatives of the animal world. In the course of last 

 year whole flocks were repeatedly seen in Northern Hungary, 

 Bohemia, and Lower Austria, and single specimens were 

 frequently obtained. Nor are they merely longer hunting- 

 journeys that this bird is undertaking, but it is its regular 

 habitat which it keeps pushing further north. In Carinthia 

 and certain parts of Tyrol it already breeds, and it extends its 

 excursions in search of plunder as far as the neighbourhood 

 of Salzburg with great regularity, there replacing the Bearded 

 Vulture, which is already almost extinct. 



Throughout the Iberian peninsula it is the commonest of 

 all the raptorial birds, and soars over the snow-fields of the 

 highest mountains and the scorching stony wastes of the 

 plains in equally large numbers. Excepting in the verdant 

 " huertas " of the park-like scenery to be found at Valencia, 

 Granada, and Murcia, this bird may be seen everywhere, for 

 Spain is the land of the Vulture, and its many lofty Sierras 

 offer the very nesting-places that these great raptorial birds 

 love, while the desert-like plains lying between the mountains 

 serve them as splendid hunting-grounds. 



It is in the best cultivated parts of the country that the 

 Griffon Vulture is most uncommon, and these are the districts 

 of Barcelona, Valencia, and the whole east coast. In the 

 south, on the contrary, from Malaga to the rocky mountains 

 about Gibraltar, there stretches a territory well stocked with 

 these birds. 



In the immediate neighbourhood of Granada I saw very 

 few, and in the Sierra Nevada, which is the special head- 

 quarters of the Bearded Vulture in Spain, I found that it 

 was very sporadic. On the other hand, the Sierra de Honda, 

 which rises between Granada and Malaga, abounds with them, 

 the lofty precipices of this wild limestone range affording 



