When birds were sucked into jet engines of a US Airways plane carrying 155 people, resulting in a forced landing in the Hudson River in January, 2009, forensic analysis of feathers revealed that the birds were migratory Canada geese. That knowledge led to a different type of wildlife management than if the birds had been residents of New York City waters.
I made a new friend last weekend at West Virginia's Berkeley Springs Fall Birding Festival. Marcy Heacker and I spoke to the group on Saturday evening. Over the course of the weekend, I got to know a forensic ornithologist.
Marcy works at the Smithsonian Institution's Division of Birds, where she identifies feather fragments at the Feather Identification Laboratory. Usually, her work involves bird strikes that bring airplanes down, but Heacker may be called upon anytime a mystery bird needs to be identified.
Heacker and three colleagues work in a lab where they have access to 600,000 bird specimens and 20,000 feather reference slides. Trained by the woman who invented this science, Roxie Laybourne, Heacker spends much of her time peering through a microscope identifying birds by the microstructure of their feathers.
In just a few minutes, for example, she taught me that galliform (quail, turkeys, pheasants and grouse) feathers can be recognized by faint lines that run along the shaft of flight feathers and that the underside of the shaft of a galliform flight feather is marked by a groove. In cross section these feather shafts are U-shaped.
"Next time you find a turkey feather in the woods, check it out," Heacker said.
One of the most famous and recent planes taken down by a bird strike was US Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15, 2009. After taking off from New York's LaGuardia Airport, the plane collided with a flock of birds at 2,900 feet. Though the collision disabled both engines, the jet landed safely in the Hudson River and all 155 people on board survived.
The Feather ID Lab used microscopic examination and sophisticated molecular techniques to determine that the birds that caused the crash were migratory Canada geese from Labrador, as opposed to non-migratory, residential geese. This is important because managing migratory geese requires different strategies than managing residential birds.
Bird-airplane strikes pose a serious threat to both human passengers and plane owners. Last year, military and civilian aircraft attributed more than $600 million in damages to bird collisions. By identifying the birds that most commonly strike aircraft, biologists may someday be able to predict and avoid devastating bird-plane collisions.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
