Short-toed Snake Eagle

The short-toed snake eagle is a fairly large raptor, 62–70 centimetres long with a wingspan up to 188 centimetres. In flight it looks somewhat like a very pale common buzzard but is much larger. Its size, its very pale and often almost unmarked underside, its long, broad wings and a flight style of hovering and hanging in the wind usually make it fairly easy to identify even at long range. (German Wikipedia, general species account)

It is the only member of an otherwise sub-Saharan African genus to breed in Europe and Central Asia. Among European raptors it is a feeding specialist, living almost exclusively on reptiles, and its occurrence is closely tied to a good supply of snakes and lizards. The Palearctic breeders are long-distance migrants wintering in the Sahel south of the Sahara. (German Wikipedia, general species account)