Crap load of birds right after take off

WannFly

WannFly

Final Approach
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Priyo
Last evening, went for a sunset flight with 2 pax, right after takeoff at about 200 AGL, I see a fairly large flock of birds (they weren’t that big like Canadian geese) heading my way. I leveled off as I saw them fly around me and trying to get away in every which direction. There was nothing I could have done other than keeping my movement as predictable to them as I can. I know like to dive, so a steep climb crossed my mind, but there were a whole lot more coming from above, so I kept flying straight and level over the runway at 200 AGL until they were behind me, used all 6k runway before I even started climbing. Told tower and they informed others to hold before that flock went to wherever the heck they were going.

Passengers enjoyed the view and had no idea what would have happened if a couple of them hit me....

One comment was , wow that was awesome, do you see them all the time? I told myself hope to never see that again. Lol.

I had zero chance of returning to the field, I had already briefed my emergence landing spot before take off, luckily didn’t had to use it. Not my first encounter with birds upon take off, but this is my encounter with a large flock that spanned from 9 o clock to 3 o clock.
 
schmookeeg said:
Finally, solving the mystery of why CAP cadets are nicknamed 'seagulls' for me, thanks. :D
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Well there’s also “seagull managers” in corporate settings...

You know, the manager who shows up once at a meeting, craps all over everything, and adds no value, flying off to do it to some other team the next day!

LOL
 
This just happened to come up. LOL

Nice kicks!

43d3c04f3057b683dc0bc4617c34f341.jpg
 
Question. Did you have your landing lights on? I have heard of a study out of Ohio State University many years ago finding less bird strikes when the lights were on.
 
A1Topgun said:
Question. Did you have your landing lights on? I have heard of a study out of Ohio State University many years ago finding less bird strikes when the lights were on.
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Yupp all my lights were on. They are always on from takeoff to touchdown
 
I had a neighbor named Harvey who was a retired Canadian farmer who loved nature and wildlife. A Canada Goose had a nest with eggs on his property but the mother bird died ... it is thought she ate some poisoned seed spilled on the ground at a neighboring farm

Harvey gathered the 5 eggs (brought the whole nest home) ... put them under warm chicken brooder lamps and they all hatched . He hand fed them and once they could walk they would follow him around like he was mother goose ... neatest thing to watch.

Geese fly south to the USA when winter comes and away they went at the end of summer. Geese have a built in GPS and they return to the place they were born .... next spring 3 of the 5 Harvey birds returned to his farm ... the following year only one returned .... Harvey told me he was sitting outside in a lawn chair and the huge bird landed right on his lap and was cackling with joy to be home again.
 
A Martin said:
Geese have a built in GPS and they return to the place they were born ....
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They do return to where they were born, but they really can't pick up signals from positioning satellites. The way birds navigate is really amazing, and not at all dissimilar to how we pilots navigate. Some have actual whiskey compasses in their brains, and can navigate magnetically. Geese and other long range migratory birds use pilotage. They follow other birds down learning landmarks as they go.
 
Researchers think geese have a "strand" of magnetic-sensitive material in the brain that they use to navigate.

One of the most remarkable is the common honey bee .... it has been said they have more brain computing power than any man-made computer .... they leave the hive in a meandering search of nectar and use the position of the sun for navigation .... on the way back they use it to find the hive again .... but this time they fly straight to the hive .... then they do sort of a dance routine in front of the other bees which is a communication telling the others the coordinates to the field of flowers and those other workers fly a "bee line" directly to the spot.

But here is the thing .... the sun is constantly moving minute by minute .... plus it is never in the exact same place each day .... but the honeybee brain knows and calculates all that ...... plus their eyes are full of facets that each look in different directions and all those things make it a near perfect navigator.
 
EdFred said:
Absolutely no one thinks that birds are using man made satellites to navigate. good lord.
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All general statements are false. Be careful with that word, "absolutely." :)
 
Flying home from out west I had numerous black colored birds not in a flock dive bomb down in front of me... one I expected to here the thud on a landing gear. Never did... but it sure looked close. They just seemingly cane out of nowhere diving fast...
 
Huckster79 said:
Flying home from out west I had numerous black colored birds not in a flock dive bomb down in front of me... one I expected to here the thud on a landing gear. Never did... but it sure looked close. They just seemingly cane out of nowhere diving fast...
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They just seemed fast because you were in a 140. :D
 
I managed to hit a turkey buzzard with the 172 when giving Margy her first small plane ride. Knocked the leading edge back to the spar.
 
TLDR version: took off, saw birds, nothing happened, so I posted about it on PoA.
 
My former home field, Pearson Field in Vancouver WA, has long had major issues with Canada Geese. They're filthy, loud, bad-tempered and stubborn.

P1040910.JPG


Several times I've had to abort landings because of geese on or near the runway. They sometimes gather on the runway, and I've had to taxi onto the runway at midfield, edge right up to them, and gun the engine to get them to waddle off to the side. By the time you taxi from the hangar to the runway your tires are covered in green goose guano. :mad: A C-152 from a nearby field dropped in at VUO for a touch-and-go. On the 'go' they encountered a flock of geese. They took one in the wing leading edge, and one went through the windshield, between the student and instructor, all the way back to the tailcone. They landed safely, but the airplane needed a new wing, a new windshield and an industrial-strength interior detail job. :eek:

I happened to be shooting landings in my new Sport Cub when by chance a Portland TV station came out to the airport to do a story on the airport's battle with the critters.

 
steingar said:
They do return to where they were born, but they really can't pick up signals from positioning satellites. The way birds navigate is really amazing, and not at all dissimilar to how we pilots navigate. Some have actual whiskey compasses in their brains, and can navigate magnetically. Geese and other long range migratory birds use pilotage. They follow other birds down learning landmarks as they go.
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https://www.the-scientist.com/cover-story/a-sense-of-mystery-38949
 
I read that there is a new "network" (think cellular phone network where your calls move seamlessly from one tower to the next, to the next...) being developed for drones. As batteries become stronger, you could fly your drone 30 miles away, drop your flowers off to your girlfriend's house and then fly the drone back... seamlessly.

That will NOT be good for planes.
 
Pilawt said:
My former home field, Pearson Field in Vancouver WA, has long had major issues with Canada Geese. They're filthy, loud, bad-tempered and stubborn.

View attachment 92198

Several times I've had to abort landings because of geese on or near the runway. They sometimes gather on the runway, and I've had to taxi onto the runway at midfield, edge right up to them, and gun the engine to get them to waddle off to the side. By the time you taxi from the hangar to the runway your tires are covered in green goose guano. :mad: A C-152 from a nearby field dropped in at VUO for a touch-and-go. On the 'go' they encountered a flock of geese. They took one in the wing leading edge, and one went through the windshield, between the student and instructor, all the way back to the tailcone. They landed safely, but the airplane needed a new wing, a new windshield and an industrial-strength interior detail job. :eek:

I happened to be shooting landings in my new Sport Cub when by chance a Portland TV station came out to the airport to do a story on the airport's battle with the critters.

Click to expand...

I was out there a few weeks ago. A flight of what seemed like about a hundred of them was heading Eastbound on what was a perfect right down wind for 26
 
AGLyme said:
I read that there is a new "network" (think cellular phone network where your calls move seamlessly from one tower to the next, to the next...) being developed for drones. As batteries become stronger, you could fly your drone 30 miles away, drop your flowers off to your girlfriend's house and then fly the drone back... seamlessly.

That will NOT be good for planes.
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That is correct. There are several being developed.
 
AGLyme said:
These mechanical birds need similar transponder rules that we (GA) have...at some point before it gets insane up there.
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An "air traffic management" system is under development too. That could feed ATC (unless the Feds build it). Such a system would allow monitoring by various agencies.
 
I once clobbered 9 or 10 Seaguls on a runway that shall remain nameless......in a turbine aircraft that shall remain nameless. Broke out at 200 and a Half, flared and was then treated to the sight of a whole Flock of Seagulls (not the band) sleeping on the nice warm runway. It sounded like popcorn. None went in an inlet so other than blood and feathers.....we were groovy.
 
I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. 'Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky'
 
One of my old mentors said his first flying job, back in the 40's, was to scare birds away from rice fields around Beaumont, TX. He said he hit a ton of them but it never damaged the Cub.

I have hit several over the years, even 2 down engines of jets, the only damage was one night in a KA200. We never knew we hit the one in the KA but it sure put a large dent in the right wing. Found the damage after we landed.

My Dad hit one in the upper teens in a Viscount at the bottom outside corner of the windshield. Blood and guts came through then some was sucked back by the pressurization and sealed the leak. Unfortunately most came through and covered him.
 
You don't want to know what happened to that flock after we reported the bird strikes. Lets just say Fins and Feathers was given carte blanche, a shotgun and a clear runway .......not a good day to be a Seagull.
 
I also may have clobbered an Eagle once......I have a bird magnet. True story.
 
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