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Bird strike

Hi Everyone,

Well one of my friends passed this on to me so had to share. There are probably newer records but I thought this was still very impressive. Just remember when getting up to cruise at FL420 look out on the way up !

Collision between a vulture and an aircraft at an altitude of 37,000 feet.-On
29 November 1973, a Riippells ’ Griffon (Gyps rueppellii) collided with a commercial
aircraft at 37,000 ft over Abijan, Ivory Coast, western Africa. The altitude is that recorded
by the pilot shortly after the impact, which damaged one of the aircrafts ’ engines and
caused it to be shut down. The plane landed safely at Abijan without further incident.
The remains of the vulture consisted of five complete and 15 partial feathers from the
wings (secondaries, lesser, and underwing coverts), tail, neck, and breast. Sufficient
details are apparent in these feathers to allow their certain identification as G. rueppellii,
using comparative material in the U.S. National Museum of Natural History.
The previous record altitude for a bird-aircraft collision was of a Mallard (Anus
platyrhynchos) at 21,000 ft (Manville, Wilson Bull., 75:92, 1963), based on feathers that
I identified from the strike. That collision occurred between Battle Mountain and Elko,
Nevada, on 9 July 1962. Other high-altitude records of birds include sightings of migrating geese at 29,000 ft, over the Himalayas (Griffin, Bird Migration, Natural History Press,
Garden City, N.Y., 1964), and soaring Bearded Vultures (Gypaetus barbatus) at over
24,000 ft (Ah, Birds of Sikkim, Oxford University Press, London, 1962).-ROXIE C.
LAYBOURNE, National Fish and Wildlife Laboratory, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. 20560. Accepted 7 June
1974.
American Coots feeding in association with Canvasbacks.-Commensal feeding

p461
p462 THE WILSON BULLETIN December 1974
Vol. 86, No. 4

Regards

Mark S.