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Birds at night

RVG8tor

RVG8tor

Well Known Member
It was a nice night tonight so I flew up to a local chapter meeting. On the return at 2500' I hit a bird! It miraculously made it thought the prop and hit the lower right cowl, flexed it enough to leave a 3" crack in the paint and maybe the fiberglass, I will not know till tomorrow.

I would like to know if anyone knows what kind of bird flies at night at this kind of altitude for the life of me I can't figure out what it might be. It had gray feathers, kind of like a pigeon.

I feel very lucky that it did not go through the canopy, I was thankful to have formation support, sort of. I flew with another guy from my airport, not night formation but 1.5 mile in trail I kept track of his strobe and we had altitude separation. Had I needed to make an emergency landing it was nice to have him there on the radio.

Ran through things logically, first, fly the plane, okay it is flying straight so no damage to control surfaces. Next, actually simultaneously scan engine instruments, all is normal. Next, fuel levels not sure if it hit the leading edge, actually in flight I thought it was maybe the wheel, I saw it just as it entered my landing lights and that sure was too late to react. So with everything normal, I made an uneventful landing and taxi back to sort out the damage.

We were only doing 125kts to save on the fuel burn so that sure helped minimize the damage. Any bird experts out there, I sure would like to hear from you! I just whet over 168 hours in my first 10 months of flying. I had my first main tire flat day before yesterday so someone really does not want me flying this week. :rolleyes:

Cheers
 
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This narrows it down for you...owls, thrushes, thrashers, catbirds, wood warblers, vireos, kinglets, nuthatches, creepers, wrens, gnatcatchers, cuckoos, buntings, rails, woodcocks, tanagers, orioles, blackbirds, bobolinks, and most species of sparrows.

Some species that migrate either by day or by night include loons, grebes, ducks, geese, swans, shorebirds, swifts, and swallows, hummingbirds, auks and murres.

They navigate using the stars, so enjoy flying when we do. They are most abundant during Spring and Fall migration. They like to travel with the weather, mostly between 1,500-5,000' AGL. Tonight it looks like they had about a 15 kt tailwind while heading South.
 
birds also migrate at night as it is believed many species feel safer in poor light. also, this leaves daytime to forage for food.
next spring notice how the robins are always back in the morning when you get up but the blackbirds [purple grackles] come cruisin' in in the afternoon.
 
I hit a goose one night flying freight in a Caravan. Crushed the leading edge all the way to the spar.

They are out there.

Mark
 
They are even flying higher

About two weeks ago, I had a birdstrike on a night take-off from Paris climbing through 7000ft.
Upon arrival 10 hours later we found some blood and feathers above the two right hand pitots and just below the AOA sensor of the B777.
We were unable to identify the bird and were lucky it did not block the pitots or AOA sensor.
So birds fly high at night.
 
BATS fly at night. Many years ago in San Antonio in the military, we would actually send a guy over to the weather shop to monitor the radar for T-38 night flying. There would be a 'bloom' on the radar around sunset as millions of bats emerged from their cave and dispersed around the area. Not unusual to lose the occasional engine to a bat strike.
 
I was thinking a swift, because they fly at night catching bugs. But since it's also migration season, it could have been anything! Glad the damage was not worse.

(A goose to a Caravan wing? :eek::eek:...)
 
Just a recent experience, my son works for a company that makes night vision cameras. We were testing a new product at night here in the pattern at Reno Stead a couple of weeks ago. While replaying the video we keep seeing what looked like meteorites flashing by the aircraft horizontally left and right, just white streaks. Turns out it was night flying birds with no position lights. I was amazed how many we counted in a 30 minute flight. Dan
 
Amazed

Thanks for all the posts, as usual this site is full of great resources of information. I was doing some web searching last night after I posted, I seems at night we share the sky with more birds than I thought.

The comment about tail winds was spot on. I was mostly south bound when it happened, going around some restricted airspace, and there was a nice 15 knot tailwind at the time.

Time to get to the airport and see if there is any thing structurally wrong with the cowl. I does not flex when I push on it so I think the crack I see is just where the paint cracked.

"Gator" 1 - Bird 0

Cheers
 
Annual Report

Well this was great reading. I always knew that the risk of bird strikes increase with altitude. Actually this was one of my considerations for the night flight that I took. Even in the day I will use the gas to fly higher, I have passed too many hawks and other large birds in the 1500 foot arena.

Seems only 30% of bird strikes happen at night and only 5% happen above 2500', go figure, I mitigated my risk about as good as it could be without just not flying and I still hit one!

Mitigation

Altitude: 2500'
Time: 2 hours after sunset
Speed: Only doing 125 knots

Things I know now or reminded I already knew.

There are lots of birds flying at night
October to November are highest risk months for birds.
 
RV Wannabe said:
I hit a goose one night flying freight in a Caravan. Crushed the leading edge all the way to the spar.

They are out there.
Click to expand...

Indeed. My record was 5 geese in one whack while hauling night freight in a C-310R. It was past midnight at 7000' nearing Des Moines... took 1 in the wing, smashed the leading edge almost back to the spar, plus 1 each on the horizontal stabs, smashed leading edges back to the spars, plus 1 in the engine which mangled the spinner. Nasty mess, lotta damage. Glad they missed the windshield...
 
Heads up near KTSP!

For anyone planning on flying in or around KTSP, the Turkey Vultures are migrating, and Tehachapi seems to be a favorite RON. Just yesterday I saw about a dozen circling right under downwind for KTSP looking for a landing field. The good news is that their 5-6 foot wingspan makes them fairly easy to spot in the daytime. The bad news is that at 4-5 lb they're most likely coming through a canopy/windshield.
 
Smacked a bird on climb out from KSLC one night in the King Air and didn't know it till I was putting the plane into the hanger. There was bird mush and a nice big dent in the leading edge of the right wing. Ended up replacing the leading edge outboard of the engine nacelle. You'd think you would hear an impact like that but I never heard or felt a thing.
 
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