BSI: Bird Strike Investigation

While Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood isn't sure that legislation is needed, he tells NEWSWEEK, "I can't think of why we would object to this." LeBoeuf can: enforceability. How would the FAA ensure that all bird strikes were reported? he asks. Many strikes are only discovered by maintenance crews after the fact. (Schumer's office did not respond to NEWSWEEK's inquiries on this matter.) LeBoeuf says reporting is easier to enforce in the armed services since its members are accustomed to many rules and regulations, but even then he isn't sure all strikes get reported.

Identifying which birds are most likely to hit aircraft does not necessarily translate into a silver bullet for avoiding them. While the Air Force can choose not to fly at a certain time or fly a different route, commercial air lines don't have that luxury. Impatient passengers would not stand for their flights being cancelled on account of possible bird migration. Existing radar technology used by both the military and the FAA rely on Doppler weather radar to look at bird flight patterns on a bigger scale. Smaller local radar stationed at a few airports and Air Force bases, depending on the model, can detect birds about five to six miles out and about 3,000 feet up. This type of avian radar is only being used at a few sites though and is not used to instruct pilots in real-time, in part because the radar can interfere with the transmissions of other technology and has not been reviewed to the FAA's satisfaction, says Ed Herricks of the Center of Excellence for Airport Technology at the University of Illinois. Even if the radar technology had been stationed at LaGuardia Airport (which it was not), it probably would not have detected the geese that downed Flight 1549 since the incident occurred at the radar's limits, he says.

The complex obstacles to utilizing the technology are more than a matter of money. "The public expects Star Wars is real," LeBoeuf comments. "There's an awful lot to do between getting the information on the machines and transferring that information to the pilots."

In the meantime, Dove says each envelope in the mail gets her a little closer to making air travel safer. Her process involves comparing feathers to the Smithsonian samples and using DNA analysis to identify tissue samples or snarge (a term created from combining "snot" and "garbage"). When those both fail, the team looks at the barbs on feathers to identify at least the family of bird (e.g. duck or dove). "It's really quite complex," she explains. "When you take a feather from a different part of a bird, the barbs on the downy part may be entirely different." Dove estimates it took her some eight to 10 years to hone her techniques. Now the lab reports it can ID about 90 percent of the bird-strike remains it receives. (Watch a video of Dove in action at her lab.)

Once they know what birds they're dealing with, wildlife biologists can then roll out their full arsenal—making the area around airports as inhospitable as possible by getting rid of the birds' favored food source, and in the case of Canada Geese, employing remote-control boats or border collies to chase them out of ponds, oiling eggs which keeps them from hatching, and firing loud specialized firecrackers to scare them off, according to Allen Gosser, assistant state director for New York with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services. Gosser says that during migratory season his teams will come back to a site by an airport two or three times a day for five days, in the hopes of sending the "stay out" message to the birds. But their efforts can only go so far—pushing birds to another location, typically three miles away, and some of their efforts are blocked by environmental-protection laws.

Dove, the daughter of poultry farmers, used to run and hide when her grandmother butchered a chicken for dinner, but now she doesn't even flinch when studying the most grisly remains. "It's like solving a puzzle," she says. "Each case is different with a different set of materials, and that keeps it interesting." If the FAA makes reporting mandatory, she anticipates a lot more birds will be sent her way. "It's not a glamorous job, but I love it. I can't see myself doing anything else," she says. And for that, air passengers everywhere should be grateful.

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