On the birdstrike thing, in the UK it is now mandatory. The ANO article 143 says:
Mandatory reporting of birdstrikes
(1) Subject to the provisions of this article, the commander of an aircraft shall make a report to the CAA of any birdstrike occurrence which occurs whilst the aircraft is in flight within the United Kingdom.
(2) The report shall be made within such time, by such means and shall contain such information as may be prescribed and it shall be presented in such form as the CAA may in any particular case approve.
(3) Nothing in this article shall require a person to report any occurrence which he has reported under article 142 or which he has reason to believe has been or will be reported by another person to the CAA in accordance with that article.
(4) A person shall not make any report under this article if he knows or has reason to believe that the report is false in any particular.
(5) In this article “birdstrike occurrence” means an incident in flight in which the commander of an aircraft has reason to believe that the aircraft has been in collision with one or more than one bird.
On the mode S thing, who knows!! Lots of the promises of things that mode was supposed to bring don't seem to be coming to fruition. The last I heard about the the airframe ID (the 24-bit address), there were concerns that equipment was being moved from one airframe to another and so confidence was being lost inn the ability to know the airframe ID in the long-term. Most plans for short-term idents appear to revolve around the aircraft ID feature on-board aircraft (i.e. the box that the crew are supposed to put the current callsign into) although early studies have shown that this is oftenm incorrectly entered.
And, as far as I know, no 8s or 9s in squawks because of the coding used to send the data - there was another thread on this topic a week or three ago.