Photo: Which birds bring down airplanes?
Bird strikes, as we saw from the “miracle on the Hudson,” have the potential to be extremely dangerous. While typically the result is not as catastrophic, birds and other wildlife strikes to aircraft annually cause over $600 million in damage to U.S. civil and military aviation each year. Yet in order to deal with those strikes and reduce the chances of future ones, airport authorities must know what species are being hit. That’s where the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab comes in.
