About 0530, driving groggily down the freeway. I’m slow, doing about 60 because the right lane is closed for construction. I see a large hawk take off from between the pylons with something dead in its talons. thud Now my windshield is smashed, low on the driver’s side, and there’s a dead raptor at the side of the road somewhere. 
Sorry to hear that. We done in an owl some years ago. We were driving along a highway built on an embankment at night, and the bird must have been skimming along a field and rose up suddenly to go over the road.
Wow! That must have woken you up!
Bummer.
Heading across I-10 in Florida last year, we were in a pack of cars doing about 75 mph or so.
A Great White Heron lifted off from the treeline up ahead, and circled towards us like a SAM rising from Hanoi. We were in the right lane with cars to the left and behind, so I could do nothing but watch incredulously as he came closer and closer.
Fortunately, he impacted the right side A-pillar, so no glass was broken, and no one was killed by a mouthful of high-speed bird.
Sorry, bird.
I was ridding with my friend in his pickup when we took out, not one bird, but two. They were two crows that were dining on some roadkill in the middle of the road and were waiting to the last minute to avoid us. One got high enough that he was juuust caught by the top edge of the hood which flipped him up, he then connected with the front edge of the roof and went over the top of the truck. Lastly, he smacked into the top lip of the tailgate as the truck passed under his body.
I can decide if he got off better then his buddy who never made it past the grill.
Funny you should use that imagery. My friend was driving across the everglades when he saw a heron up in the sky. Suddenly, he saw a little bird come screaming up from ground level “Like a Surface to Air Missile” and hit that heron. the heron fell, tumbling, from the sky and hit the front grill of his truck where it stuck with its head bouncing on the hood in the wind.
Never hit a bird with a car in my life until one week I bagged two Magpie’s. Really sucks as they are awesome birds (despite the swooping in Spring)
Hell, I’m an ace! I don’t know if the hawk was #5 or #6.
SO says we need to find a priest to bless my vehicles. Seems people – and now animals – have a habit of running into them.
That’s why you stencil the little outlines of the different critters you’ve hit on the side of the car–so you can keep track.
My former boss took out a robin once and was pretty upset about it. I assured her that the robin had probably been eating pyrocantha berries and was stoned out of its gourd when it flew in front of her car and therefore died happy.
My car would be decorated in beer cans and squirrels :eek:
Then, do I have to do squirrels on my bicycle frame?
Ouch, that would smart a tad…poor bird.
A couple of years ago I was driving home from work when a small bird flew in and hit the front windscreen, however instead of the usual thud and tumble away in some bizarre combination of speed and angle it just exploded in a spray of blood and gore… :eek:
Now that was definitely a dead bird.
Years ago, when I’m first learning to drive, the actual first time, I managed to hit a robin. I was going maybe 5-10 mph, so I can’t say it was my fault.
I grew up in Indiana, on a small lake. There was an enormous house - hell - chateau across from us. They had a huge great room that overlooked the lake and most of that side of the house was a window. 2 stories high, and 40 feet across, at least. It had the most beautiful view of the lake and sunset you could want. And every day, a bird or three would smack into that glass and fall dead to the ground.
They put up streamers, pie pans, flags, and everything they could think of to distract or stop those poor birds, but to no avail. I lived there 3 years, and I know there couldn’t have been 2 days in a row without a kamikaze incident.
My parents have 4 bird feeders hanging off a small deck near a set of sliding glass doors. We’ve had a number of attempted kamikaze incidents, most not fatal, but we were very sad to lose a male red bellied woodpecker recently.
Fortunately, no damage has been done to the house.
Resurrected this thread due to an odd incident that happened a couple of days ago.
I was driving to work minding my own business and thinking the thoughts of the righteous when I was suddenly and viciously attacked by a suicidal kamikaze crow which swooped in out of nowhere and impacted my windscreen.
Best bit was it then bounced off and whacked an innocent pedestrian walking in the other direction across the side of the head… :eek:
She was fine though, albeit surprised and bemused (the pedestrian, the crow had had better days).
If life was a movie that would be the start of an endearingly surreal romantic comedy but alas…