Every jet engine has a 'grill' in the combustion chamber, set to 'black & crispy'
Seriously, why put a metal FOD hazard in front of every engine for every flight? Metal grill + heron ingestion could have destroyed the engine, or if the bird had not been diced by the mesh, obstructed airflow for the duration?
I could only see one heron on the slow-mo, nearly made it too. Anyone care to speculate on outcome if it had hit the windscreen?
PS not an engineer