Close Encounters with Vultures!

September is International Vulture Awareness month with celebrations around the world. As part of the campaign to highlight these remarkable birds and their crucial role in our ecosystem, I wanted to share a close encounter with Griffon Vultures that we had in Kroustas earlier this year…

    As the truck arrives in the main street of the mountain village of Kroustas, a burst of excited chatter ripples around the gathered crowd. Most of those here are schoolchildren from the village primary school, with their parents and teachers, along with a number of midday visitors – interested residents from the village of Kritsa a little lower down the mountain – a couple of enthusiastic photographers…

   At first glance, what’s in the back of this truck doesn’t look interesting enough to merit this level of excitement. There are four plain, large boxes with a series of mesh-covered holes punched in a line around the top. Yet, when the bearded, enthusiastic Spiros Liapakis from The Natural History Museum of Crete springs from the cab, and tells us that we need to follow the truck just a little further, it’s like the Pied Piper has started playing a tune.

   We are all on the move at once, advancing to reassemble at a rocky clearing beyond the outer limits of the village. No one wants to miss a moment of this event - because what we’ve come to witness today is an important piece of targeted Greek conservation – the release of four mighty Griffon Vultures back into the wild.

   Griffon Vultures are one of the largest birds of prey in Europe, with a wingspan of nearly three metres, and a body length of roughly a metre. They travel huge distances, soaring without beating their wings to save energy, and can fly at a documented maximum speed of 150kph. Griffon Vultures live for between thirty-five and forty years in captivity, but in the wild, breeding pairs hatch only one egg a year, and young birds don’t mature until they are five. It is estimated that 70% will die within these first five crucial years.

   The fragility of breeding populations is one of the reasons that the Griffon Vulture is extinct in large parts of Greece. In March 2024 it was estimated that there were fewer than 50 pairs in all of the continental regions of the country. Crete’s Griffon Vulture population, by contrast, is one of the best comeback stories of recent years with a steady, small increase to an estimated 360 breeding pairs in 2021 and over 1000 individuals today. A small number are even being transported to reintroduce the species elsewhere - but there is still no room quite yet for celebration.

   Griffon Vultures are extremely vulnerable to habitat loss, and immature birds are particularly vulnerable to increases in temperature and lack of water. One dehydrated young bird fell into the sea and was rescued by a beachgoer near Sitea in July 2023. Other threats include electrocution and collision with energy infrastructures like wind turbines and wires. Today’s release is of injured birds that have been treated at ANIMA’s Wildlife Conservation Hospital in Athens, a collaboration with the National History Museum of Crete.

By far the greatest threat to vultures throughout Greece - is human. Griffon Vultures are still most at risk from illegal wildlife killing and poisoning.

Education is one of Spiros Liapakis’ key aims – passing on the message that “We humans are not the centre of the world, we are part of it!” He volunteers to deal with injuries when birds are brought to the laboratory of the Museum - and today’s release is an important demonstration of conservation in action.

As the four large crates are unloaded from the back of the truck and carried between straining volunteers to the edge of the tumbling cliff, Spiros tells us Griffon Vultures are nature’s clean-up crew. They forage in groups, riding furthest on the thermals of midday, scenting carrion kilometres away, and feed only on dead animals. Powerful stomach acid allows them to digest carcasses safely, removing harmful bacteria and viruses from the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (According to Science Direct, vultures worldwide remove the equivalent of the emissions of 12-13 million cars each year).

…And then, the moment we’ve all been anticipating. Even the youngest child in the crowd falls silent as the hatch of one the crates is drawn slowly upwards. Something deep within lurches and scrapes - and then - the first Griffon Vulture takes a faltering step towards the drop.

   It is glossy brown, with a white head emerging from a spiky ruff of sandy feathers, deep-set eyes, dark, sharp beak. It has an electronic tracker on its back and a numbered tag pinned into one wing. It is almost prehistoric in its size and form – a winged giant, as alien and strange as a creature from ancient myth. For a moment, the bird seems mesmerised by its freedom, by the vista of the dazzling blue sea five hundred and forty metres below, before it stretches its great wings experimentally. Then, with a sudden beat of the air, it is gone, riding the muscular wind out towards the horizon.  

   Each of the four releases is preceded by the same deep hush of expectation, as the vultures emerge from darkness to light. Only one bird lingers for longer than it should - turning for a moment, inspecting us all through dark eyes that seem to possess knowledge, both of the living and the world beyond. There is a collective, beautiful chorus of ‘Wows”  - not all of them from the children - before it launches. High.

If the symbolism of mythology is correct and vultures are connected to purification and renewal, then we can only hope that the Griffon Vultures of Crete continue to flourish, to create this kind of excitement – this wonder - in all of us, so that we continue to aid their conservation…

Because as the vulture wheels about and is lost to the cavernous drop and the faint sprawl of Gorse and scrub below, I wonder if its fragility may also be sending us a warning message about our own vulnerability to global warming, overdevelopment and diminishing water supplies - and to our survival as a species.

Video Clip by permission of Craig Dolman. Unless otherwise noted, all photographs used in Claire In Crete are copyright of the author