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Roosts and Property Destruction

Though about three-fourths of the vulture complaints received by Martin S. Lowney of the USDA's Wildlife Services Program are agricultural, increasing numbers of complaints are coming from urban and suburban areas. These problems include roosts in residential and business areas and property destruction.

Michael L. Avery, a research wildlife biologist in Gainesville, Florida, and Thomas W. Seamans, a wildlife biologist in Sandusky, Ohio, have also heard increasing numbers of vulture complaints from residents in urban and suburban areas. Both work for the National Wildlife Research Center, the research unit of the Wildlife Services Program.

"Roosts are problems only when they're in somebody's backyard, basically," Avery said. "We were looking at a place this morning with about 200-300 vultures right in the tree line in somebody's backyard."

"All the complaints we've had here in Ohio concern roosts," agreed Seamans. "We can get 30 or 40 birds roosting in maybe three or four trees. We had 1 person here in Ohio having trouble selling his house because a vulture roost was established around it. One person in Bowling Green had a roost and he was only 8 blocks from the center of town. One night isn't too bad. Two nights isn't too bad but after a few nights..."

The vultures kill trees in roosts by breaking branches and defecating and the smell can be overwhelming. "The birds defecate at night," Seamans continued. "They defecate in the morning. They can coat areas with excrement. When they get upset, they'll vomit, so all the garbage they're eating comes out."

"We've got retirement communities in Florida that are landscaped very nicely," Avery said. "They have little lakes in them and these little lakes often have small islands in them. These islands have trees which are great places for vultures to roost. Sometimes you have a very exclusive neighborhood with a vulture roost right in the middle of its little lake."