A book at the Carnegie library called Fuzz, written by Mary Roach, includes a potential solution for those concerned about the environmental and sanitary impacts of large number of vultures roosting in Eureka Springs during the winter.
Local bird lover Gwen Bennett said the book details research that shows hanging up a dead vulture upside down with its wings spread out has been shown to prevent other vultures from roosting even for five months after the effigy was taken down.
Page 102 of the book states that the National Wildlife Research Center has “Guidelines for Using Effigies to Disperse Nuisance Vulture Roosts. The posture of the prepared bird should resemble a dead bird hung by its feet with one or both wings hanging down in a(n) outstretched manner.”
I spoke to two researchers who wrote the effigy how-to manual, Michael Avery (since retired) and John Humphrey, of the NWRC’s Florida Field Station. In a 2002 study, they and a colleague documented the effects of gaffing a vulture carcass or a taxidermied vulture on six communications towers.
Vultures like to roost on these and other open-frame towers, and their slippery, pungent droppings make climbing the structures dangerous and gross for repair crews. Within nine days of hanging an effigy, the ranks of roosting vultures were lower by 93 to 100 percent. The birds stayed away as long as five months after the effigy was taken down (or rotted).”
Roach wrote that Avery was a convert. “Works like a charm.”
“As with a charm, there is no rational, non-voodooey explanation for why it works,” Roach wrote. “The answer I give people who ask,” Humphrey told me, “is we don’t know. But if I went into a neighborhood and saw a person hanging upside down from a tree, I’d leave, too.”
Bennett said one of the local tree removal climbers could probably hang effigies in the trees or possibly on a pole on top of buildings where they have been causing problems with perching. She said they might want to put it on a pulley to bring it up and down.
“The vultures are leaving March 15, so we only have another three weeks this year,” Bennett said. “But maybe it could be tried next year. You might be able to work with Arkansas Fish & Game to get a dead vulture or a taxidermist to make a fake dead vulture. I would trust the research myself. They obviously tried different things and the effigy worked up to five months after they took it down. I’d say that is pretty effective. But you have to remember, once you move them out of one roost, they are going to look for another. It might be a process. We are on a high ridge, and the topography of our city makes warm thermals for them to rise up on.”