>I saw something big go past my windshield. I looked in the mirror and saw a cloud of feathers with handlebars. My buddy had caught a vulture square in the chest. I'm amazed he stayed upright on the bike. I had to take him to the ER where they found he had several cracked ribs.
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>Wow! You wouldn't think a bird could do that much damage, but then again, vultures are pretty big birds and you guys were traveling pretty fast.
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>I saw a picture of damage done to a big plane from a bird. In one picture, you can see the bird's wing sticking out of the side of the front nose cone ... just the wing, stuck in the crack it had made when it hit. Amazing that there was that much damage. Oh wait ... I found the link (but you may have to sign up to see it, I'm not sure):
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>http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/PhotoGallery_BirdStrikeDamage_196324-1.html
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>I can post this elsewhere (like on my website) if someone wants to see it without signing up for this site. Just let me know.

Yeah, bird strikes on aircraft are serious business. Years ago my dad worked for Avro/Orenda on the Arrow project and the Iroquois jet engine. This was in the Toronto, Ontario area - lots of pretty large, well-fed Canada geese around.

To simulate ingesting a Canada goose in an Iroquois engine, they developed a "turkey cannon" - a compressed air gun that would blast a thawed turkey into the intake of the engine while it was running on a test stand at full military power. This was in the days before monocrystalline turbine blades, so they sometimes had interesting results < g >