Author Topic: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???  (Read 6924 times)

Offline Perazzimx14

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #30 on: July 05, 2016, 03:09:16 PM »
A turkey an I collided at about 45mph. He hit my right shoulder and from what the fellers riding behind say there was an impressed huge PUFF of feathers and then the turkey spinning circles behind me sliding down the road as I rode away.
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Offline Blue Pipes

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #31 on: July 05, 2016, 03:20:32 PM »
I work at LAX and was riding in on my V7R just before sunup on Aviation Blvd. Was right by the north runway where the planes come in real low to land and saw an owl out of the corner of my eye flying across the road just ahead of me. It ended up flying right over top of me and cleared my head by about 5 feet. Was pretty cool to see up close like that and was probably the only time in my 63 years that I have seen one in the wild.

Offline pehayes

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #32 on: July 05, 2016, 04:29:41 PM »
Swear I could hear its wings beating the wind as it passed over .

I doubt you heard it.  Just your imagination.  Owls hunt in darkness by listening for the tiny footsteps of prey.  If their wings made any noise it would first startle the prey and second overstimulate their hearing.  Owl feathers have fringes all along each side which cushion the rubbing of the feathers as they fly and absorb any friction produced sounds.

http://www.owlpages.com/owls/articles.php?a=7

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

oldbike54

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #33 on: July 05, 2016, 04:33:07 PM »
 Patrick , don't go messing up my perceptions with a bunch of facts  :tongue:

 Dusty
« Last Edit: July 05, 2016, 04:36:36 PM by oldbike54 »

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #33 on: July 05, 2016, 04:33:07 PM »

Offline Kiwi_Roy

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #34 on: July 05, 2016, 04:37:27 PM »
I was following my buddy on his KZ1000 when we came up on a bald eagle eating at the side of road.
It took off along the road in our direction, my friend could have reached up and grabbed its feet.
Spectacular when you see one that close.
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Offline atavar

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #35 on: July 05, 2016, 04:39:11 PM »
I doubt you heard it.  Just your imagination.  Owls hunt in darkness by listening for the tiny footsteps of prey.  If their wings made any noise it would first startle the prey and second overstimulate their hearing.  Owl feathers have fringes all along each side which cushion the rubbing of the feathers as they fly and absorb any friction produced sounds.

http://www.owlpages.com/owls/articles.php?a=7

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

I beg to differ.  When hunting upland game I have on more than one occasion been startled by the sound of a large owl as it took off or made course changes.  One Great Horned in particular took off a couple feet from me and sounded as loud as a freight train as it grabbed air for lift.  They can certainly be stealthy when gliding in for a kill but when using power those massive wings make a great racket. 

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Offline tiger_one

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #36 on: July 05, 2016, 05:29:14 PM »
Like Chuck, I have done the, oh look, bunch of vultures, bet I can scare the crap out of them by speeding up.  Yep, they took off all directions only one went my direction and I ran up under him as he looked down and back at me and emptied his stomach in my path.  Never do that again.
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Online nick949

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #37 on: July 05, 2016, 05:48:29 PM »
No owls, but today we chased (at extremely slow speed) a pair of Loggerhead Shrikes down the road near where we are working. Any birders out there will know just how lucky this was, since there are thought to be somewhat less than 30 breeding pairs in Canada.

We couldn't catch them though. I'll just have to put my plans for shrike pie on hold.

Nick

Offline pete mcgee

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #38 on: July 05, 2016, 10:25:44 PM »
Around 25 years ago I had a magpie "stall" in front of me on a road west of West Wyalong NSW.
I was just on 190 kph on the mk 3 LeMans and had just enough time to duck, it bounced off the top of my helmet.
A mate who was behind me at similar speed described an explosion of feathers with a spinning black and white carcass spinning towards him, it just missed him. We adjusted our speed back to the politically correct level shortly after.
The other memorable bird strike thankfully wasn't on the bike, I hit a goose with the top of the windscreen of the old Datsun, dented the windscreen trim and left a few feathers, that would have been face height on the bike, the car behind me center punched it with his radiator.
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Offline rodekyll

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #39 on: July 06, 2016, 01:29:55 AM »
I often have owls buzz me when I'm taking my night pics.  I've come to expect it and don't like to quit until it happens.

That said, in the complete silence of the Alaska wilderness, I have never heard an owl flying.  My fish and game biologist friends (yeah, I got friends) concur with the 'wing filter' explanation -- Owls have brushes on their feather edges that suppress sound.  I imagine that launching or radical maneuvers could generate noise, but normal flight is silent.

By comparison, listen for ravens.  They sound like a minivan full of wiffle bats all swinging for the bleachers.

oldbike54

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #40 on: July 06, 2016, 09:28:22 AM »
 Well , this owl was going up at a steep angle , dunno .

 Dusty

Offline Howard R

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #41 on: July 06, 2016, 12:18:12 PM »
Paging Bob Annandale!  Paging Bob Annandale!  Buzzard Bob to the white courtesy phone please!

http://wildguzzi.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=21366472bebe728103d464027c8da6dd&topic=54036.0;nowap

I have a few more.

1.  Some years back, one morning at the Ohio rally Gary White was leading a group to breakfast from Toronto Band Camp to Bergholz.   (I said it was a while back didn't I?)  Passing a flock of buzzards sitting in a tree on the side of the road, one of them decided to strafe Gary, almost hit the top of his helmet.  No idea why, Gary didn't look that dead, his bike was still moving.

2.  Yes, if they feel they are not gaining altitude fast enough buzzards will, um, "eject ballast" by any means available to them.  I interrupted a lunch buffet on the side of the road, and there was one (there is always one) that decided to flee along the road instead of away from it.  Later my buddy who was riding behind me was joking about the bird crapping on me.  I informed him that I had gotten a good look at the origin of the material while I was (successfully, thank goodness) dodging the stream.  It was not crap.

That same stretch of road also featured many kamikaze chipmunks.  They would run across the road as they heard us coming.  After several near misses, I swear one of them went BETWEEN my wheels, I'm sure he didn't go in front of me but I never felt a thump.

3.  My only actual hit was in my 2002 Subaru WRX one day on my way home from work.  On a multi-lane, major highway (equivalent to an interstate, controlled access with median) a goose flew up from bushes on the side of the road and decided to land on the pavement IN MY LANE!  He got one foot on the asphalt and then thought better of the idea and started taking off again, but by then (after MUCH braking) I was too close for him to the clear the car.  At the last second I reflexively closed my eyes and turned my head.  I heard and felt a thump, but did not get a face full of broken glass and bird guts.  A quick glance in the rear view mirror showed a HUGE cloud of feathers with cars skidding in all directions.  Thinking I had escaped unscathed I continued on my way.  A few minutes later I noticed something didn't look quite right, then it dawned on me that there was a big hole in the hood where the air scoop for the turbo intercooler used to be.  The bird had hit the top edge of the scoop, and the impact launched the resulting combination of bird & car shrapnel cleanly over the roof.  The only other mark I found when I got home was one feather caught on the end of the radio antenna.  It cost me about $300 by the time there was a new air scoop back on the hood, painted to match.

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Offline redrider90

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Re: Clsoe encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #42 on: July 06, 2016, 12:57:23 PM »
Dusty:  Gotta remember, owls are crepuscular birds.   

Personally, I've never had a close encounter with an owl on a bike.  Many, many close calls with big vultures in the south and west. 

Probably the worst bird I've ever tangled with is my wife's talking African Grey parrot.   She is a sarcastic little beast, with a sick sense of humor.    You can tell pretty quickly that birds are basically dinosaurs.    A T-Rex would have the same kind of humor.


Living deep in the woods on a river I see barred during the day. It's not unusual (although it doesn't happen often) to have owls land in the open space of my garden and see them hunt. Also I see them fly though the woods as we come on go on the gravel tree lined roads. They will fly right 10-20 feet the above the car. Owls may be more active at twilight but they are  also active all day long.
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Offline SmithSwede

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Re: Close encounters of the ... bird kind ???
« Reply #43 on: July 06, 2016, 05:54:14 PM »
Yes, when startled or attacked, vultures engage in "defensive vomiting."   Nasty, nasty stuff, and extremely acidic, with a Ph of 1 to 2.  Scares away predators, or burns them, destroys paint, etc. 

I've had many near collisions with vultures.  I've learned to just slow the heck down when I see a group of them on the road.

So, what do you call a group of vultures when they are feeding on the ground?     A wake.     Isn't that wonderful?

A group of vultures in flight is called a "kettle."    A group of vultures resting in a tree is called a "committee."   I've been interested in these birds because I have several large "committees" living on my property. 

Another interesting thing about vultures is they have one of the keenest senses of smell of any animal in the animal kingdom.   They basically smell death. 

Their sense of smell permits them to detect very low concentrations of ethyl mercaptan, which is the stinky chemical added to otherwise odorless petroleum gases like propane, butane or natural gas.   

A researcher in the early 1960s noted that vultures would flock to the smell of ethyl mercaptan, so one of the reasons to add that chemical is to attract the vultures.     Vultures congregating in a certain location along a gas pipeline indicates a leak. 
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