Originally Posted by Stingray8854

I'm sure planes hit birds of prey sometimes, and just like your accident with your car, I can't see how it would amount to "harassment" in a legal sense, just an accident..(edit)..

I do a little 1:1 flying and when I started taking my certificate in the local GA airport (EKRK), I was surpised to see how often a couple of hawks were patrolling the airport area. I asked one of the Air Traffic Controllers if that wasn't dangerous (the airport also takes a fair amount of executive jets), but he explained that birds were very confident with the traffic patterns and always stayed out of harms way. The birds were so common guests, that the ATC even had nick named them

Originally Posted by Stingray8854

"We are poor little lambs...who have lost our way...baaaaaaa, baaaaaaa, baaaaaaa..." Ah, good stuff indeed. Yeah, Robert Conrad played a good Boyington. I liked ol' Sgt Mickland too, the squadron mechanic. I believe the actor's name was Red West. The real Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was quite a character. A real hell raiser, and didn't always follow the rules. He'd drink 'em all under the table, and more than once he was known to kick ass and take names if someone got sideways with him. But he was a hell of a fighter pilot and his men respected him. I don't know his tally, but I'm sure he splashed a lot of Zeros and other Japanese planes. An old school, Semper Fi Marine all the way. Oorah!!

I have an autographed picture of Pappy sitting in his Corsair!
I also just got a H9 P-40 Warhawk 50 size, I'm going to use the AVG theme plane #21 (Pappy's). I'll be contacting Callie graphics when I get a little closer on the build, just got the ARF yesterday!!

I fly with a group of family and friends behind a house with a huge field. We fly there so often that the birds don't really come around much. When birds flies through we sometimes (not every time) fly up and try to interact with them. Sometimes they scatter and sometimes not. We certainly don't try to hurt them. I don't know what the big deal about interacting with birds is. Can't we share the airspace and sometimes interact?

cant believe where this thread went ! One cry baby bleeding heart and now its harassment to fly with the birds !

You might even compare the USA to this thread.

Originally Posted by Ron H

You might even compare the USA to this thread.

or Canada for that matter

Well, you do have to consider some history where some real abuse did take place. The most plentiful bird in the United States, the passenger pigeon, used to fly in flocks so large that it took hours for a single flock to fly overhead.

In the same demented mindset that tolerated slavery, enough people with shotguns in every state blasted them out of the sky that the species is extinct. But it's a long ways from our present situation where if you fly a model airplane within 100 yards of a bird, even if the bird enters your airspace and you did not pursue the bird, that you can be arrested for animal abuse.

Then the commercial airliner flies through a flock of birds, which are obliterated entering the turbines of both engines, causing the plane to ditch in the Hudson River.......the pilot is a hero! If these tree huggers were consistent, he'd go directly to jail! But they're not. Occasionally that's a good thing, but insanity is not predictable!

Originally Posted by fastfwd

cant believe where this thread went ! One cry baby bleeding heart and now its harassment to fly with the birds !

Yeah. And I really just thought of the "harassment" part of it as an afterthought. Not because I felt I would have been harassing the bird (certainly not my intention), but if someone else saw it they might have possibly reported it to the authorities as such. Not very likely, but you never know. The only reason I didn't fly near the hawk was because I didn't want my plane to become assorted small pieces of debris under his perch on the ground. I wonder how often birds actually get injured or even downed by RC planes, intentional or not? I'm sure it's happened before, although it must be very rare.

Originally Posted by Stingray8854

Yeah. And I really just thought of the "harassment" part of it as an afterthought. Not because I felt I would have been harassing the bird (certainly not my intention), but if someone else saw it they might have possibly reported it to the authorities as such. Not very likely, but you never know. The only reason I didn't fly near the hawk was because I didn't want my plane to become assorted small pieces of debris under his perch on the ground. I wonder how often birds actually get injured or even downed by RC planes, intentional or not? I'm sure it's happened before, although it must be very rare.

RC Glider Attack By Crow Crashed 2 (1 min 38 sec)

Eagle Attacks Rc Glider At Alice Springs (4 min 25 sec)

Just do a utube search of birds attacking rc planes. I have had a hawk smack my hawksky, i was no where near it but i guess the sound drew it to the plane

Originally Posted by fastfwd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHT46...s_digest-vrecs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i01375f8Irs

Just do a utube search of birds attacking rc planes. I have had a hawk smack my hawksky, i was no where near it but i guess the sound drew it to the plane

Yeah, I've seen the videos of birds attacking rc planes. I just wonder how often the BIRD comes out on the short end of the deal. I'm sure rc planes hit, take down, and even kill birds at times, and I'd bet the vast majority of those incidents are completely unintentional. Still, I'm curious how often it happens.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Well, you do have to consider some history where some real abuse did take place. The most plentiful bird in the United States, the passenger pigeon, used to fly in flocks so large that it took hours for a single flock to fly overhead.

I think I read somewhere it could take days during migration.

I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had, undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose... Before sunset I reached Louisville, distance from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession.

John J Audubon - 1820's

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

John J Audubon - 1820's

have millions of pigeons here in Idaho !

I found a YouTube video of a hawk attacking a wing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=FpV74Cd5wt4#!

Originally Posted by fastfwd

have millions of pigeons here in Idaho !

Different kind of pigeon.