A
Anonymous
Guest
I've a few avian mysteries and observations...
To begin, there was the incident witnessed by my girlfriend and I in 1999 as we followed two other cars through the country lanes near Banbury. Without warning - and obviously disturbed by the passage of the car in front - a pheasant shot out from the hedgerow on the nearside and into the path of the car behind (the one in front of ours). As it disappeared from view - all this in a fraction, you understand - we expected the worst. Instead, the pheasant emerged in the middle of the road sans tail feathers and made it to the otherside, otherwise apparently unharmed. Its colourful posterior decoration lay in the middle of the road in a thin strip. Evidently they had been plucked from its backside as the car's right-front tyre rolled over them in a perfectly timed and choreographed action. Closest thing I've seen in life to the Roadrunner of cartoon fame.
Another one was witnessed by my girlfriend alone, when driving to work in Kent a while back. Same scenario - country lane. This time it involved a pair of birds (species not known) which were immersed in the twisting aerial dance of courtship close to ground level - too preoccupied to notice the car's approach. Too late to brake, 'A' thought she had passed clearly beneath them, but looking into her rear view mirror, saw one freeze in mid-air and plummet to the tarmac, and bounce, obviously deceased. The other fluttered in the air, clearly confused as to what had happened. Love hurts.
Finally, a couple of avian mysteries:
The first is one I see often even now, but don't remember seeing before a few years ago. It involves birds - often sparrows & starlings - suddenly emerging from left and flying beneath bonnet level across the path of my car. I'm sure it's not, as I suggested above, a surprise reaction to the car's sudden presence, nor a statistical feature of travel by car. Often, the road is quite open, and the numbers of birds swooping suddenly across my path seem far greater than chance. It's almost as if they're doing it for 'kicks' - perhaps riding the bow-wave of air generated by the vehicle?
The second is one more diffcult to explain. It was, again, 1999, in a village in North Wales whose name totally eludes me. I remarked at a section of road that was absolutely smothered with the smashed and flattened carcasses of small birds (sparrows?). There must have been hundreds, covering both sides of the road. Why so many in one spot? It was as if a lorry had hit them all simultaneously. But surely they would not all be flattened across the entire road surface? Unfortunately, we didn't stop to investigate or take pix ('though we had cameras with us).
To begin, there was the incident witnessed by my girlfriend and I in 1999 as we followed two other cars through the country lanes near Banbury. Without warning - and obviously disturbed by the passage of the car in front - a pheasant shot out from the hedgerow on the nearside and into the path of the car behind (the one in front of ours). As it disappeared from view - all this in a fraction, you understand - we expected the worst. Instead, the pheasant emerged in the middle of the road sans tail feathers and made it to the otherside, otherwise apparently unharmed. Its colourful posterior decoration lay in the middle of the road in a thin strip. Evidently they had been plucked from its backside as the car's right-front tyre rolled over them in a perfectly timed and choreographed action. Closest thing I've seen in life to the Roadrunner of cartoon fame.
Another one was witnessed by my girlfriend alone, when driving to work in Kent a while back. Same scenario - country lane. This time it involved a pair of birds (species not known) which were immersed in the twisting aerial dance of courtship close to ground level - too preoccupied to notice the car's approach. Too late to brake, 'A' thought she had passed clearly beneath them, but looking into her rear view mirror, saw one freeze in mid-air and plummet to the tarmac, and bounce, obviously deceased. The other fluttered in the air, clearly confused as to what had happened. Love hurts.
Finally, a couple of avian mysteries:
The first is one I see often even now, but don't remember seeing before a few years ago. It involves birds - often sparrows & starlings - suddenly emerging from left and flying beneath bonnet level across the path of my car. I'm sure it's not, as I suggested above, a surprise reaction to the car's sudden presence, nor a statistical feature of travel by car. Often, the road is quite open, and the numbers of birds swooping suddenly across my path seem far greater than chance. It's almost as if they're doing it for 'kicks' - perhaps riding the bow-wave of air generated by the vehicle?
The second is one more diffcult to explain. It was, again, 1999, in a village in North Wales whose name totally eludes me. I remarked at a section of road that was absolutely smothered with the smashed and flattened carcasses of small birds (sparrows?). There must have been hundreds, covering both sides of the road. Why so many in one spot? It was as if a lorry had hit them all simultaneously. But surely they would not all be flattened across the entire road surface? Unfortunately, we didn't stop to investigate or take pix ('though we had cameras with us).
