Birds of Germany: Common Species and Where to See Them

How many bird species live in Germany?

More than 520 bird species have been recorded in Germany, according to the German Ornithologists’ Society. That list includes rare visitors from Siberia, North America and Africa, but only a fraction of the species are common breeding birds. Germany lies on major migration routes between Scandinavia, Russia and Africa, so millions of birds pass through every spring and fall.

The country’s landscapes give it a wide range of birds: the North Sea and Baltic coasts with the Wadden Sea mudflats, the lakes and wetlands of the northeast, farmland and forests across the center, and the Alps along Bavaria’s southern border.

Common garden and town birds

Most Germans see the same group of birds in gardens, parks and courtyards. In NABU’s yearly “Hour of Garden Birds” count, the house sparrow, blackbird and great tit are usually among the most frequently reported species.

The Eurasian blackbird is a thrush and a close relative of the American robin. Its rich, fluting song from rooftops and treetops is one of the most familiar sounds of German towns from February to July. Blackbirds were once mainly shy forest birds; during the 1800s they increasingly moved into parks and gardens, and today they are among the most familiar town birds in Germany.

The house sparrow still lives in colonies in villages and older city districts, although numbers have fallen in parts of Germany, as in much of Europe. The great tit and the Eurasian blue tit nest in tree holes and nest boxes and feed their chicks largely on caterpillars. Other common town birds include the European robin, wood pigeon, Eurasian magpie, carrion crow, European starling, greenfinch, goldfinch, black redstart and, in summer, common swifts screaming over rooftops.

White stork: Germany’s best-loved migrant

The white stork (Weißstorch) is a large black and white bird, 100–115 cm (39–45 in) long with a wingspan of 155–215 cm (61–85 in). It nests on roofs, church towers, chimneys and specially built platforms and feeds on frogs, mice, insects and earthworms in wet meadows. Pairs greet each other at the nest by throwing their heads back and clattering their bills loudly, because adult storks have almost no voice.

Germany’s stork population fell to fewer than 3,000 pairs in the late 1980s as wet meadows were drained. Since then it has recovered strongly, to more than 7,500 pairs in 2021, with most of the recent growth in western and southern Germany. Rühstädt on the Elbe in Brandenburg, the country’s most stork-rich village, has hosted around 40 nesting pairs in good years, with up to five nests on a single roof.

German storks are split by a migration divide. Birds from the west and south of the country fly southwest over the Strait of Gibraltar to winter in West Africa or, increasingly, in Spain, while eastern storks fly southeast over the Bosphorus and down the Nile to East and southern Africa. Our article on where storks migrate follows both routes.

Red kite: Germany’s own bird of prey

The red kite (Rotmilan, Milvus milvus) is a slender, rusty-red raptor, 60–70 cm (24–28 in) long with a wingspan of 175–195 cm (69–77 in) and a deeply forked tail that it twists constantly as it glides over fields. It hunts small mammals, birds and earthworms and often scavenges along roads.

Red kites live almost only in Europe, and Germany is the heart of their range. Estimates of the world population lie at roughly 32,000–39,000 breeding pairs, and Germany holds somewhere between about 40% and half of them, with especially high densities in Saxony-Anhalt, around the Harz mountains and in Thuringia. German numbers fell in the 1990s as farming changed, then stabilized. Collisions with wind turbines, poisoning and power lines are among the threats conservationists watch most closely.

Common crane and the great autumn gatherings

The common crane (Kranich) is a tall gray bird, 100–130 cm (39–51 in) long, with a black and white neck and a red crown patch. Its loud, trumpeting calls carry for kilometers. Cranes nest in quiet bogs, wet woods and lake shores, and their German breeding population has grown from about 700 pairs in 1978 to more than 10,000 pairs by 2017.

Germany is famous for crane migration. From late summer to November, birds from Scandinavia and the Baltic gather at resting sites in the northeast, roosting in shallow water at night and feeding on harvested fields by day. Numbers peak in October, when tens of thousands of cranes can be seen around Rügen and the Bock peninsula in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, at Linum north of Berlin, at the Kelbra reservoir south of the Harz and in the Diepholz moors of Lower Saxony. In autumn 2025, bird flu killed thousands of cranes at German resting sites, and scientists are watching how the population recovers.

Black woodpecker, eagle-owl and white-tailed eagle

• Black woodpecker (Schwarzspecht): the largest woodpecker in Europe, about crow-sized at up to 57 cm (22 in), all black with a red crown. Around 34,000 pairs live in German forests with old beech and pine trees. Its large, oval nest holes are later used by stock doves, owls, bats and other animals.
• Eurasian eagle-owl (Uhu): one of the world’s largest owls, with a wingspan of up to about 1.9 m (6 ft 2 in) and orange eyes. After vanishing from large parts of Germany in the twentieth century, it has returned thanks to protection and reintroductions, to about 2,000 pairs in 2016. It often nests in quarries and on cliffs and has even settled in cities such as Hamburg.
• White-tailed eagle (Seeadler): the largest eagle in Europe, 66–94 cm (26–37 in) long with a wingspan of about 1.8–2.45 m (6–8 ft). It recovered from about 185 pairs in 1990 to roughly 700 pairs in 2018 after the pesticide DDT was banned, and more than half nest in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Coasts and migration hotspots

• Wadden Sea: the mudflats of the North Sea coast, protected by national parks in Lower Saxony, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, are among the most important stopover sites in the world for shorebirds and geese. An estimated 10–12 million birds pass through the Danish, German and Dutch Wadden Sea each year.
• Helgoland: this small island in the North Sea has Germany’s only seabird cliffs, with northern gannets, common guillemots, kittiwakes and razorbills, and more than 440 bird species have been recorded there, a record for Central Europe.
• Lower Oder Valley and Mecklenburg Lake District: wetlands and lakes in the northeast with cranes, white-tailed eagles, ospreys and geese.
• Bavarian Alps: home to golden eagles, alpine choughs, wallcreepers and ptarmigan.

Spring migration peaks from March to May and fall migration from August to November. For the mammals, reptiles and other wildlife that share these places, see our guide to wild animals in Germany.

Watching birds responsibly in Germany

Many of Germany’s best bird sites are nature reserves with rules about staying on paths, especially during the breeding season and in the Wadden Sea national parks. Keep well back from nests, cranes and resting flocks, which take off if people come too close and waste energy they need for migration. Guided crane-watching tours and observation hides in many reserves allow close views without disturbing the birds.