Collection Review: Papo Eagles and Vultures

Figure Brand: Papo
Figure Name(s): Griffon Vulture (50168) + African Fish Eagle  (50282)
Sex: Males
Name: Griffon Vulture- Donn- Celtic for ‘The Dark One’
African Fish Eagle- Iolar- Irish for ‘Eagle’
Year Made: Griffon Vulture- 2015
African Fish Eagle- 2022
Observations/Thoughts:
I don’t have many bird figurines, so I seen these two in a shop together and decided to go for them. These Papo birds of prey are both awesome! Gorgeous and powerful poses for them both.

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Donn, the Griffon Vulture is my favourite of the two, he’s got such a large and striking pose with his wings spread and claws out, helping to balance him back on his tail. He really looks like he’s going to dive on something. Each individual feather is also really visible and nicely sculpted, each feather depending on where it is has great patterns on it too. I’m very pleased so far with Papo’s bird sculpts, they seem to be my favourite of all the major brands. Maybe because from what I’ve seen they have such dynamic poses, with wings spread.
I called him Donn as I was looking for a dark name to call him in keeping with his nature of being a vulture, so I went with Donn which means ‘The Dark One.’
Edit: it's pronounced something a little bit like: 'Doh-ahn.' as opposed to just 'Don.'

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The second bird I bought is Iolar, the African Fish Eagle. I also love him loads, he balances really well on a fish he’s caught and has his wings spread. Looks so large and powerful and also balances back on his spread tail. His pattern/feathers are a good bit like a Bald Eagle, at first that’s what I though he was until I read the receipt. His beak is shut, which might actually have added to his interest if it was open? I dunno...
What I did originally think was that his eyes should be an actual  yellow gold rather than just black dots, to give him that real eagle look, but looking at the birds on google images, I see they actually do have dark eyes anyway. That's a nice attention to detail on Papo's part.
Anyway, I called him Iolar(pronounced ‘Eee-Lawr’) because that’s what he is, quintessentially an eagle, with a swooping pose again, having just caught a fish.

Rating: Griffon Vulture 5/5
African Fish Eagle 5/5

Very good bird figures

Thank you Widukind, they are, aren't they?

Correct, currently Papo is the brand for birds. They're unbeatable these days and those two are magnificent and they deserve a big five.
African sea eagles and bald eagles are quite close related and they're similar. Actually, since bald eagles are much more popular, I feared Papo would mess the features of the species but fortunately they got it all correct. The griffon is maybe somewhat forgoten among us, I don't have it myself but I find it such a beautiful figure.

Thanks Roger, and your right, Papo is the brand for birds, all look fantastic. I had owls and swans by them, but now I think I'll stretch to other birds too. They do lovely magpies and hummingbirds.

The Griffon Vulture is amazing! I love his pose with the spread out wings and his colouring looks nice as well.
He is like many other Papo birds on my wishlist.
I'm still not sure about the African Fish Eagle. I like his pose and it is not that common that those birds have their prey sculpted with them. But I'm still undecided. Well my "bird-wishlist" is not as elaborated as the mammal one so he might fly right into it.
I love the names you chose for them. Celtic languages are a completely unknown world for me. I'm more into Romanic, Germanic and Slavic languages (though romanic the most). Linguistics is a fun and interesting science on it's own and I love to see how all those animals I collect are called in different languages.

Definitely Katy, I think he's an amazing sculpt and is my favourite bird sculpt so far. I should have noted his name is actually pronounced something like 'Doh-ahn' not actually just 'Don!' :)