State-Journal.com - Vultures haunt the Mansion lawn

Photo By Hilly SchifferTurkey vultures and black vultures roost on a spruce tree in the Governor’s Mansion lawn Monday at 6:30 p.m.

Hundreds of huge, black vultures - which have chosen Frankfort as their winter home the last few years - seem to have taken a special interest in the area around the Capitol this year.

The most popular nighttime roost site recently has been in tall spruce and white pine trees on the lawn of the nearby Governor's Mansion.

The numbers are down considerably in 2008, from a record count of 1,100 last year by Brainard Palmer-Ball Jr., a zoologist with the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission.

He's counted about 500 this year, with most departing in the last few weeks with the rising temperatures.

Of the birds counted, 300 were reddish-headed turkey vultures, and 200 were darker-headed and shorter-tailed black vultures.

In winter 2006, the vultures roost site was along the south side of the East-West Connector between the city's water treatment ponds and the Kentucky River. The vultures numbered as many as 700 that year, Palmer-Ball said.

In 2007, the vultures, at night, were perched in trees in Montrose Park along East Main Street and the wooded slope above Warsaw Street, which runs parallel to Holmes Street.

"This year they haven't really chosen one spot," Palmer-Ball said. "Some have settled in around the Capitol. Others have been seen on bluffs along the Kentucky River between the Frankfort Cemetery and downtown."

Donna Gibson, executive director of Paul Sawyier Public Library who lives on Graham Avenue in Montrose Park, enjoyed watching the vultures in the trees in her yard last year.

"A few have come back this year," she said Monday evening. "But I haven't seen nearly as many, and they don't visit as often."

The colder weather this year probably diminished the numbers here, Palmer-Ball said. Most of the turkey vultures migrate from Canada and the Great Lakes area, and the black vultures come from the Ohio River corridor, he said.

Vultures roost communally during the non-breeding season, he said. In Kentucky, the largest roosts are typically observed from late fall into late winter, with the roosts breaking up as soon as warm weather arrives.

Each morning the birds disperse looking for road kill " some going 10 to 15 miles or more, Palmer-Ball said. Then in the early evening the birds congregate in the roost area, swirling in the sky in loose groups before settling into the roost trees by sunset.