http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...-jet-engine-off.html
Excellent photo of a flock of starlings being blended by a Boeing !

We have several trillion more that could be blended to clean up the environment.

When I was flying for the Marine Corps in Okinawa back in the early 70's, there was an obscure requirement to send any remains from a bird strike to CONUS for "inspection".

Our faithful assistant Ops officer boxed up a three-pound sea gull that dinged a slat on an A-4 and sent by regular post it to whomever the hell wanted the thing in Washington.

The bird was relatively intact.

After a couple of weeks en route, we got messages from CMC, the Postmaster General, the CG of the Wing and some guy in the Pentagon that we could just take pictures in the future.

Dang, I'm glad I didn't open that package. I wonder how many mailmen puked delivering that gooey mess.

I can relate to that! I think I may have poted this before but it should be a good read again. We had a DC9-32 pulled into the hanger with the radome gone, windshield cracked and the leading edge of one wing holed. Climb out from IAH and they hit a flock of Canadas. Big birds, solid, high impact speed = lots of damage, quickly! One of the birds was trapped between the insulation blanket and the firewall, another that went through the leading edge wingcap was stopped at the wing spar. All in all, one hell of a mess! Did you see how much crap is in a goose when he goes "Splat?"
I always thought they were lucky to have not lost the aircraft!

Don't recall if I posted this here before--
lost a prop tip a wing root faring and part of a nacelle cover off a 310's LE after a buzzard strike.

Thought the LE was going to rip itself from the AC before I could get it shut down.

After landing inspection revealed 2 1/2 in off prop tip gone and engine mount deformed, in addition to the skin damage and missing covers.

Have had other strikes but this was the worst.

About 30 years ago an F4 pilot was badly injured by a buzzard strike over Lake Travis near Bergstrom AFB.

All I could think was yuck.

Then a few years later an F4 ate a bird on take off and landed in a self storage business. Both pilots got out ok. At the time I worked at a place where I could see the smoke after it went down.

A few years before the self storage crash an F-4 had conked out on take off and tried to make it back around to land. They landed about 600 yards from the end of the runway. The pilots escaped that one too. On the way home I drove by a smoking engine still laying in the ditch next to the fence. I could see the smoke from work too. No bird strike that I know of but I learned to identify a smoking pile of F4 on the ground with that one.

And the first flames and smoke I ever saw was 1959. My dad took my brothers and I to get a haircut on Cherry Lane on the edge of Ft Worth. As we left the barbershop we heard on the radio about the crash and drove about a mile to the top of the hill and watched it burn.

58-1017 24 YB/RB-58A n/a
Assigned to 43rd BW; destroyed on 9/16/59 -- at Carswell AFB, TX; cause was tire failure during takeoff roll and aborted takeoff; AF pilot Maj. Kenneth Lewis (survived); AF Nav/bombardier Maj. Willis Edgecomb (fatal); AF DSO Capt. Lee Barnett (fatal).

B-58 crashes here If you have MS Word

Once I had a day long run to somewhere, and had a bunch of snow fall the night before.

So in the morning I bladed off the runway and left. Don't remember when I got back but it was probably 9 pm or so. Unfortunately, since it was one of the first snows the ground was warmer than most anywhere else, and it seems like every bird from 10 miles around was camped out on the runway. It took me a minute to figure out what was happening as it sounded like I hit a rainstorm, the only fortunate thing was since I was going so slow it didn't really do any damage except needing a good cleaning the next day.