Crows run a lone Vulture off I can’t imagine what 200 vultures would do
As a kid I remember the Saturday afternoon horror movies where some creature preys on a city most often Tokyo or New York well it seems a real live version of this is playing out in the town of Bartow Florida. The town of Bartow has been set upon by a flock of black vultures that have taken to eating or attempting to eat everything;
while city administrators sort out the legal issues, James Bruce is left with screeching birds that vomit on his cars and eat the shingles off his roof.
“I’ve about had it,” he said Friday. “I started to break out my shotgun about 4 o’clock this morning and wake Bartow right up.
“They’ve destroyed our 2007 Ford Fusion,” he said, “eating the rubber seal around the windows and the sunroof. There are claw marks all over the hood of my (Geo) Tracker and they’re all over the metal roof of our sunroom.”
When the birds have had their fill, they vomit, creating a horrible stench.
“It’s enough to turn your stomach,” Bruce said. “Something has to be done.”
What a mess and there is little that can be done because town laws has set Bartow up as a bird sanctuary and even more problematic Vultures are a federally protected bird. This will become more and more an issue as these birds, that at one time were threatened, become more and more prolific with little to control the population. Birds of prey especially many hawks are seeing good increases and I suspect it won’t be to long that the numbers in some areas will have a negative impact on other species especially small mammals and birds.
It is great to see these magnificent birds make a comeback but now is the time to figure out how we will control the numbers while we are seeing these isolated cases like Bartow.
