Vultures flock to a Columbia neighborhood where woman won’t stop feeding them raw meat

Feng Sun’s neighbors in Columbia were fed up and grossed out.

They were tired of the stench of decaying meat, the poop dripping down their rooftops and the regurgitated chicken bones in their yards.

Sun, a resident of the Glenmont neighborhood near Long Reach, is resisting efforts to make her stop feeding raw meat to black vultures in her backyard.

Her actions drew hundreds of the prehistoric-looking scavengers to the neighborhood, where they often lined rooftops and tree branches around her house.

Sun, who did not respond to requests for comment, told county health officials she believes the birds need her help.

“I’m a bird lover, and I love to feed all the wild birds,” Sun wrote in a March 20 letter to the board of health. “I believe the birds are guardian angels for us all.”

But county officials disagree, finding her feeding of the lapdog-size birds a health hazard and a nuisance.

She was warned and stopped feeding the vultures years ago. But she resumed feeding them last year and her ongoing dispute with county officials has advanced to Howard County Circuit Court, where Sun is appealing a July 21 ruling by a district court judge that found her guilty of violating the county health code and fined her $2,500.

For the birds

About six or seven years ago, Sun noticed a committee of them shivering in her backyard amid a winter cold snap, she wrote in her letter. She started slipping snacks to the birds, which are native to North America. That grew to her putting out about 50 pounds of raw chicken each week until the county sent her a warning.

She said she stopped for years, but then last August about 20 vultures landed in her yard again. The birds appeared underweight and some shivered with cold, she wrote.

“I felt absolutely imperative to feed them to help them over the winter, no matter what the authorities say,” the letter stated.

Sun began leaving cat food out for the vultures, sometimes more than 40 cans per day, before switching to raw chicken. Throughout the winter, Sun estimated, she fed hundreds of vultures more than 200 pounds of chicken per day, totaling more than 10,000 pounds, she said in her letter.

To neighbor Agnes Reid, the vultures don’t resemble guardian angels but rather the villains from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller “The Birds,” whose attacks terrorize a small town and drive a family from their home.

Reid’s 5-year-old grandson was afraid to go alone to a neighbor’s house for a playdate because of the vultures, she said, asking her to accompany him.

“What in the world is going on over there?” Reid said she wondered last winter.

Neighbors snapped photos of dozens of vultures roosting in their trees and filed complaints to the health department.

Court records show the county first received a complaint about the vultures on Jan. 9 and confirmed their presence the following month with two inspections. Officials sent Sun a warning and gave her until April 3 to clean up the decomposing chicken from her property.

Throughout the spring, Sun continued feeding the vultures and filed appeals to the county’s orders.

Like his neighbors, Sun’s husband, Qiang Zhao, had enough. When she appealed the first county order in March, he filed for divorce.

Zhao, who also was named in the county’s violation notice, testified that he was not part of the feeding operation but acknowledged paying for the chicken.

Speaking to the Howard County Board of Health in April, Zhao said he believed his soon-to-be ex-wife was a good person who wanted to help the environment, but he agreed with the county that she was creating a health hazard and a nuisance. He tried to get Sun to stop, but she refused.

According to a summary of testimony to the health board, the county’s environmental health specialist and health officer said raw chicken carcasses draw not only vultures but other wildlife, vermin and insects, all of which have the potential to spread disease.

Sun, who’s representing herself, repeatedly disputed the county’s claims. In written defenses, she argued “vulture droppings act as a natural sanitizer” and said black vultures are under extinction threat.

County health department spokesperson Lisa de Hernández declined to comment on the pending case.

Although vultures help to remove diseases associated with decaying carcasses from the environment, their feces carry pathogens and should not be considered safe, said Marian Wahl, who has served on Purdue University’s research team studying vultures. There is also evidence that they can pick up pathogens from human food, including antibiotic resistant strains, she said.

One species of vulture, the California condor, is nearly extinct, but populations of black and turkey vultures are considered stable and even growing in some places, Wahl said.

“We do want to keep these populations up,” she said, “just ideally not in the suburbs.”

On July 21, after the health department took the case to district court, Associate District Judge Claude de Vastey Jones found Sun guilty on a civil charge of “repeated failure to cease feeding vultures” and improper food disposal. A day later, she filed an appeal.

Parties in the case are scheduled to appear in Circuit Court for another trial Oct. 13.

On Tuesday morning, the trees around Sun’s home were free of vultures. A recent rainstorm had washed the droppings from the rooftops. Neighbors say avian activity has eased on the cul-de-sac, but they’re afraid the birds will return.

Far overhead, about a dozen of the dark-feathered birds circled the neighborhood.

This article has been updated to clarify that the Glenmont neighborhood is near the Long Reach village of Columbia.