Birds of a feather
How to share the skies with other winged creatures
When I joined the staff of AOPA Pilot in June 1998, I had only been in a general aviation aircraft once in my life. My first assignments at the magazine included reviewing submissions for our most-read section: “Never Again.” Without any GA knowledge and an unhealthy fear of anything my mother had deemed as risky, it was perhaps not the best assignment to begin a career in aviation.
And, since these were the days before email, I spent a lot of time opening hand-written or typed manuscripts with illustrative accompaniments—polaroid photos. So, each day I greeted my workday with aviation exploits deemed unnecessary to do again. Especially consistent were stories—and the photos—of bird strikes. These graphic novellas of birds blasting through cockpits were usually accompanied by even more graphic photos. Lots of blood and guts. Sometimes the submission was even accompanied by feathers of the unfortunate creature.
By the time I took my introductory flight and then later when I began flight lessons (Mom was pretty unhappy about that), I had a fear of birds greater than Hitchcock could have imagined. I regularly told pilots I flew with as well as my flight instructor the location of any bird anywhere near us anywhere in the sky anywhere near the airplane. Some thought my only word was “bird!”
So, you can imagine all these years later my fascination to find the “Feather Lab” at the Smithsonian Institution, a think tank of remarkable scientists whose jobs since the late 1960s has been to study the habits of birds near airports. Officially the Smithsonian Feather Identification Lab, the facility is located on the sixth floor of the National Museum of Natural History and is a labyrinth of floor-to-ceiling cabinets containing more than 600,000 specimens of 85 percent of the world’s bird species. The job of the five-person DNA specialists at the lab is to identify the species of birds involved in bird strikes.
The why
“It’s important to identify the bird species your aircraft struck because knowing the exact species allows you to be proactive in managing the strike risk,” said Jim Whatton, assistant program manager. “Most bird strikes occur within five miles of the airfield and under 3,000 feet. Since these are occurring in the airfield environment, you can modify the habitat to reduce the attractiveness of the airfield to the bird. Engineers and aircraft designers also use the species information, including average weight, to make sure aircraft are functioning properly and improve aircraft design based on past damaging incidents.”
It was Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 in October 1960 that crashed on takeoff from Logan International Airport (BOS) in Boston after a bird strike that prompted the establishment of the Feather Lab. The takeoff was affected six seconds after liftoff at about 120 feet when a flock of starlings were sucked into the engines. The Lockheed L–188A Electra crashed into Winthrop Bay and 62 people on board were killed.
“The Feather Lab started with Roxie Laybourne who identified the birds involved in the deadliest bird strike in U.S. history. The investigators sent the remains to D.C. for her to identify, and that’s what started her career,” Whatton said. Laybourne was a scientist who pioneered the study of forensic ornithology. Her specialty was identifying dead birds from their feathers to learn about birds involved in aircraft strikes. Her research has helped solve 1,000 bird-related aircraft strikes per year from 1966 to today.
The Feather Lab was funded by the FAA starting in 2000 with Carla Dove as program manager. It was her team that identified the birds involved in the second well-known airplane bird strike—the “Miracle on the Hudson.” US Airways Flight 1549 struck birds shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York, causing the aircraft to lose power. Pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles were able to glide the airplane to a ditching in the Hudson River. All 155 people on board survived. Dove and her team determined that migratory Canada geese flew into each engine.
“That was such a special case with all the media attention, and we really wanted to do as much as we could on that case,” Whatton said. “We received about 70 samples from the engine that was on the bottom of the river. We did a lot of different things—we did genetic testing and were able to determine a male and female went into one engine. Two other birds went into the other engine. We also looked at the stable isotopes in the feathers. Birds molt their feathers, shedding older, weaker feathers and replacing them with feathers that have taken up elements in the environment. From that we could determine the geese were consistent with birds bred in Newfoundland rather than a resident flock. Both LaGuardia and JFK had great goose roundup management programs, so this was important to learn that it was not a weakness in their programs.”
The how
Much like my morning routine opening submissions for “Never Again,” research assistant Ingrid Rochon starts her day opening the mail. It’s a gruesome process. The mail can have feathers, photos, samples known as “snarge,” and occasionally whole carcasses. The staff discourages carcasses—they smell. Snarge is a nice way of saying snot and garbage that’s left over from the bird strike.
“When you’re driving in your car and an insect smacks your windshield, that splatter is snarge,” Whatton said. “When the bird hits the airplane and just blood and guts are left over, that’s snarge. We did have a Navy chief who suggested it was an acronym for species not apparent requires genetic evaluation. That’s perfect; it’s not what it is, but we’ll take it.”
Rochon sorts the samples in the mail. The lab receives more than 100 samples a day during spring and fall migration. She triages the samples by how the staff can process the submission.
“If there’s whole feathers that we think we can match up to the collection here, we will bring those out and try to turn around the identification in the same day,” Whatton said. “If we have to send it to the DNA lab—if it’s just snarge that’s left over—that takes three to five days.”
Rochon reacts to the opening of a letter with revulsion; the others smile and say they know what she’s opened. It’s snarge and feathers from an osprey. Those birds have a distinct smell from the sea and the fish they eat. To check they are correct, Whatton brings an osprey specimen from the cabinets. They match the feathers to the specimen, and Rochon’s nose is correct.
“We are purely an identification service. So, we produce the identification and report back to whomever submitted it. That can be anyone from the pilot to the wildlife biologist on the airfield. If there’s no wildlife biologist, the pilot can report the information back to the airport operators. There are also USDA biologists in every state that may cover that airfield on a regular basis if they are not there full-time,” Whatton said.
What’s in it for you?
The Smithsonian Feather Lab has interagency agreements with the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marines, and the FAA that allows birds that hit airplanes to be sent to the lab free of charge. And at large airports there is usually someone on staff who takes care of reporting bird strikes. They can address the problem on the local level to see if a certain species is being hit repeatedly.
“Birds are coming to an airfield for food, water, the habitat or cover. If you can find out why they are there and change or eliminate the reason, then the birds are less likely to come there,” Whatton said. “If the kestrels are being attracted to the airfield because there’s an insect, like lots of dragonflies, maybe the operators can try pesticide spraying. There’s a lot of anecdotal cases that have shown that an airfield missed the pesticide spraying and then there was a record year for bird strikes at the field.”
General aviation pilots can be extremely helpful to the research and their reports are a missing link in the Feather Lab’s activity.
“We see a lot of accidents with GA aircraft that are extremely damaging. We would really like to encourage all general aviation owners and operators to report their bird strikes. It’s really important to identify the species involved in the bird strike because it’s the first step in mitigating the risk,” Whatton said. “Most GA airfields will not have a wildlife biologist on staff. It’s up to the aircraft owners and operators to report these strikes on their own. And that in turn will increase the data set, and the more data we have the more information we have to mitigate the risk to aircraft, operators, passengers. And that’s what we really want to do—keep everybody safe.”
Whatton and the staff suggest GA pilots keep bird-strike collecting kits in their aircraft (see “Make a Snarge Bag,” at right).
“I am a fan of birds. I’m a bird watcher, so I go out and watch birds in my spare time,” Whatton said. “I love birds and that’s one of the reasons we do this job. We want to keep people safe, but we also want to keep the birds safe too.” 
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