Birds!
 

Man, I am starting to wonder whether bird strikes are like that old saw about pilots of retractables landing gear-up. . . "there are those that have, and those that will." Yesterday was a really beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest, sunny and clear, and I flew to Newport, OR just for fun. On the way back I cruised the coastline back north, and decided to drop in to Nehalem Bay State Airport (3S7) in Manzanita, OR. As I descended from a left base entry and turned onto final for Rwy 33, over the water, what do I see but two large marine birds flapping around just above and ahead? Where are they going? Why are they flapping? Are they going up? Or going down? (This is sounding a lot like P.D. Eastman's "Go Dog, Go", my favorite book as a child and one my long-suffering mother read to me many, many times....):p

Well, they just swirled around and did not seem to have any specific course in mind, or altitude, and so in the end I just went ahead and made the approach. But one of those birds ended up d***ed close overhead as I went past, and I still don't know what the best course of action would have been.:(

The landing was fine. Nehalem Bay is a nice little strip with beach access, camping on the field (there was a couple camping there with a sweet looking high-wing job, looked like an old Stinson), and I enjoyed the stop. But I am still a bit bothered about those birds, and about not having any clear way to avoid them, other than - I guess - to have broken off the approach and hoped they were gone next time around.

I hit a small bird in the RV6 at cruise. I saw him just before impact, no time to react. He hit the upper right windscreen and glanced off, no damage but it sounded like someone smacked the canopy with a baseball bat.

Years ago with two of my sons we were crossing over a lake and went through a flock of geese at night in a Skyhawk. They were just blurs, they were going above and below..very, very close.
They must have been juking to miss me because, again I had no time to react, probably good I didn't.

I hit a sparrow with the leading edge in my Supercub, very small dent. Probably just as likely to get a bird strike on the trailing edge in the cub :]

Down, usually..
 

Hi John,
Birds will usually dive if they're higher than 20-50 feet and in my Ag work I have to dodge them all the time. I tell all the guys who come here for training that you absolutely do not want to hit a big bird in your RV at 180+ MPH....makes for a bad day indeed.

A friend was taking off in a -4 a while back with birds sitting on the edge of the runway. As he lifted off and came close to them, they jumped up, with one of them breaking his wood prop...splitting it lengthwise and into the right fuel tank leading edge. He went around the pattern and landed safely but the tank had to be removed for repair. We found out then that if they're low, birds will go up and vice versa if they're high.

Regards,

Funny thing about birds, I don't ever remember seeing so many as I have since I started flying the -9.

Saturday we took off out of Goose Creek (That may be some kind of hint, don't fly out of a place called Goose Creek.) and at 100 feet had to dive to avoid a crane. Man, those birds are BIG up close.

I wonder if there are just more birds out there, improving environment, or is it because I'm flying more?

After two close calls with large birds in the young life of my RV (200 hrs). I am seriously thinking about painting a third of my spinner white to see if it deters birds from my plane.

My buddy is installing a new windshield in his Cherokee Six right now (not because of a bird strike).

I am urging him to go with the thicker one just for this reason!

It is only a couple of hundred dollars more, but I think it is money well spent.

:cool: CJ

Birds
 

I was on short final to a fly-in one morining and saw a bunch of barn swallows scattering. One just missed the canopy, and another one nailed me on the right wing leading edge (no RV damage...only feathers and blood left of the bird). There were so many of the little buggers that trying to avoid them was useless. The only thing I can figure is that they were on the unicom frequency instead of the tower :).

I found half a small bird sticking out of the oil cooler of my cherokee once.... the other half was found inbetween the cylinders on the left side at next oil change. Never even noticed hitting him.

And probably not squawking VFR.

I was on an ILS approach into Sugarland the other day.

Houston Approach: "N2141Y advised traffic 2 o-clock 1 mile. Apparently they apparently don't believe in using Mode C. Altitude Unknown. Transponder Blank."

N2141Y: "Roger. No joy on the traffic, but we're looking."

About 20 seconds later there was whole flock of birds right off our right wingtip. They forgot to turn on their Mode C. :)