If you’re scared of flying or an animal lover, you’d better skip this entry…
In January 2009, a flock of Canada geese forced a plane to ditch in the Hudson River. This type of thing apparently, happens a lot (see the last sentence of this entry). In order to reduce these bird strikes causing more accidents in the future, it is important for the air-accident investigators to determine which bird species were involved in the accident.
They do this by collecting ‘snarge’ a.k.a. bird remains from the aircraft. The standard technique for collecting it involves spraying the area with water and then wiping it with a paper towel. It is then sent off to the Feather Identification Lab at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. The Lab currently gets about 4,000 samples a year. Shocking!
