Owl decoy a real stiff when it comes to keeping away vultures from city high-rises
“They (vultures) land on the antenna and the in-house TV reception gets all screwed up... It’s (the decoy’s) not working.” —Robert Moreau, Woonsocket Housing Authority’s director of security
WOONSOCKET — High on the rooftop of Parkview Manor, perched atop the tree-like steel branches of a high-definition television antenna, the avian sentry keeps a constant vigil.
A little too constant, actually, because that owl’s made of plastic.
But there are real winged creatures the decoy predator is meant to deter from the high-rise residence for senior citizens and the disabled, and they’re not pretty: Turkey buzzards, aka vultures. And they wreak havoc on residents’ TV reception when they roost on the antenna.
“They land on the antenna and the in-house TV reception gets all screwed up,” says Robert Moreau, the Woonsocket Housing Authority’s director of security.
Decoy owls are sometimes used by home gardeners to scare away nuisance birds from their vegetable patches, but so far the vultures seem unfazed by the antenna bird. “It’s not working,” says Moreau. There’s been a roosting population of turkey vultures and their
stockier cousins, black vultures, in the city for years. Both species have featherless heads, but the turkey vultures are easily distinguishable from black vultures because theirs are pink and wrinkly.
They were first noticed roosting on rooftops a few years ago in the North End, where they were probably drawn to a solid waste transfer station in nearby North Smithfield. Though they’ve been known to go after live prey, vultures are scavengers, feeding almost exclusively on the flesh of roadkill and other animals that are already dead.
Terry Gelinas, who lives on the top floor of the 10story Pond Street high rise, says he first started noticing the big, ugly birds congregating on the roof of the building a few years ago. The numbers seem to have increased markedly during the last year or two.
“These last couple of years they come in big, big packs,” said Gelinas. “They’re all over our roof and the roofs of the restaurants and mills nearby. And they’re coming around with babies – little ones about a fifth of the size of the big birds.”
And boy, says Gelinas, “do they stink.”
Because they feed on rotting flesh, vultures have evolved a highly corrosive, acidic digestive system that gives off powerfully noxious odors when they defecate. But they have other peculiarly nasty habits that don’t improve their personal hygiene, including a method of cooling down known as urohidrosis – which basically means they poop on themselves. And uh – oh yeah – their favorite method of selfdefense is projectile vomiting.
Gelinas says he can tell when a roosting vulture is jostling the antenna if he’s watching television.
“The picture goes all screwed up,” he says. “It’s like somebody threw paint at it. It disfigures the whole thing.”
Chris Lahousse, the maintenance supervisor for Parkview Manor, says the brownish-black birds are known to stand their ground and can seem quite territorial, especially when they find something in the area to eat.
“They’re not afraid of anything,” says Lahousse. “They scare some of the older people.”
But so far they the only real problem vultures are causing at Parkview is the sporadic disruption of TV reception.
Though residents of the high-rise can purchase cable TV, the rooftop armature on Parkview Manor is the receiver of choice for most. It pulls in over-the-air, high-definition signals at no extra cost – a big perk for many of the residents of the WHA’s high-rise apartment buildings.
“A lot of the people here, they’re on fixed incomes,” says Lahousse. “Cable TV can be a significant expense for them.”
If there is an upside to the vulture problem, is that it’s very seasonal – confined mostly to the cold-weather months. This time of year, vultures are still seen soaring gracefully on the atmospheric updrafts, high in the sky, but they generally don’t roost as much between April and November – at least in this part of the country.
“It’s worse in the winter,” said Lahousse.
Just as they do on the rooftops of homes in the North End, vultures like roosting on the warm chimney of Parkview Manor as much as the antenna, if not more, says Lahousse. Often, they’re seen perched on the edge of chimneys with their wings outstretched in stance known as the horaltic pose, eerily reminiscent of Count Dracula when he’s getting ready to pounce.
Ornithologists believe the freaky habit serves a variety of functions, including drying out the wings and baking off bacteria associated with the creatures’ unsavory dining habits.
Vultures like roosting in high places because they’re so heavy they have trouble getting enough air under their wings to take flight from the ground. Adults can weight up to four pounds, with a wingspan of around five feet.
The senior high rises of the WHA are among the tallest buildings in the city, but Lahousse says no one is really sure why the vultures have decided to gather atop Parkview Manor and none of the others.
Lahousse says Parkview is the closest high rise to the established roosting spots of the beastly birds in the North End, however. So maybe it’s just a conveniently situated landing pad.
“Mostly we see them in the morning or late at night, then they head over to Cold Spring Park,” he says.