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Old 14th Nov 2008, 08:42
  #293 (permalink)  
chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Germany
Age: 76
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Bird habits...

The little ones seem to be good as individuals at swerving. In years of flying light aircraft I think I tagged one swallow when I would usually see about a dozen of those mad little guys zooming around on the final approach course at DNMM, Lagos during the winter months. You would see one about 3 metres in front of the windscreen do a sudden 90° banked turn and just... disappear. Amazing flyers. Every so often there would be a tiny impact and you would find a little smear but they are so small that they don't do any harm to an airplane.

Some other small breeds seem to travel in swarms, not being solo-flying insectivores, when it's sometimes a case of clobbering a few, not a problem in a prop plane. Tall grass is something to avoid if you have a choice, since that's a bird magnet, offering cover and food.

Spring and fall seem to be the worst, because of swarms of migratory birds found at those times.

When you get up to the vulture class then it's a very good idea not to fly under them since they do seem to fold their wings and drop onto you. You see them just fold up and come down like a big, black, wet paper bag. Luckily they are big enough to spot, usually, as they just fly their thermalling spirals waiting to spot something that looks like lunch.

Brown kites and other raptors can be aggressive, even seeking out your airplane to chase your big bird away from their patch of sky by diving onto you if they can get above you.

When you are faced with a take-off with raptors around it's useful to remember that they almost always will cliimb into wind. The problem can be thinking that a bird on the downwind side of the runway facing away from the runway will clear the area the way he's headed. No, they lift off and then make an immediate turn back across the centreline, right into your path.

The usual bird control measure I knew was regular mowing of the tall grass. Those bird-scaring devices didn't seem to bother African birds very much so that they didn't seem to be much use.

If Ciampino has trees then they would be an obvious place to find bird swarms at this time of year. Those splat marks seen in the photos look big for starlings but they would be the usual suspects, being very gregarious. I am sure the biologists will tell us what species was involved there.

If you have to operate to a field with birds there really isn't much you can do about the hazards posed, is there? By the time you spot a swarm headed across your path there isn't a lot you can do to avoid them.
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