Metro Jacksonville

A new question has emerged concerning the massive and expanding bird colony in and around the park. I was recently asked by a civilian aircraft pilot if the colony could expand to impose a threat to aircraft arriving and departing Mayport NAS. As I am not a pilot and no pilots serve on the committee the question had not been brought up before. As I researched the FAA and other web sites I found that bird colonies located in and around airports are often a serious cause for concern. Bird strikes have increased in recent years and cause great damage to  aircraft and loss of life. In hind site the plane that came down in the Hudson River should have been a wake up call. As I read up on reported incidents it was clear that even smaller bird species can in fact bring down aircraft and that this type of conflict is becoming more common. There are now laws that restrict the use of lands around airports for uses that may encourage greater, denser bird colonies. In some cases the FAA actually applies mitigation by discouraging birds in certain areas. They use of sound generators, removal of attractants such as dumps, fresh water ponds or nesting areas and even physical removal of birds near airports to decrease the threat.  Here is a piece taken from the FAA web page that concerns bird colonies near airports.

Wildlife Hazard Management Plan
AC 150/5200-33B â€" Hazardous Wildlife Attractants on or Near Airports and the FAA Airports Wildlife Manual provides guidance on what should be in the Wildlife Hazard Management Plan

The plan should:

Provide measures to alleviate or eliminate wildlife hazards
Identify persons who have authority for implementing the plan
Priorities for needed habitat modification
Identification of resources for the plan
Procedures to be followed during air carrier operations
Wildlife control measures
Typical Wildlife Mitigation Techniques
Habitat Modification

Fill in ponds and water sources, if practicable
Control vegetation (cut grass high or low depending upon bird species)
Wildlife Harassment Tools

Air guns
Lasers
Dogs
Wildlife patrols
Trapping and removing
Shooting if necessary and with required permits

I think that trapping or shooting would be a last resort. In fact many of the bird species at the park tend to stay below the 300 foot altitude. But there is the increasing colony of Gull and Tern species. they can be seen daily at altitudes  well above that and are often right in the flight path of incoming or departing jets. Of course jet traffic has decreased since the days of the Saratoga and the Kennedy. This may be one reason the birds began to use Huguenot Park as a nesting site. The ship left in 2007 but air traffic had diminished before that for several years. That was about the time the bird colony began to develop at the park. I still remember seeing baby birds on the beach for the first time around 2003 or 2004. This combined with the natural loss of some nesting area in Nassau Sound 4.5 miles North may be the reason the birds developed the habit of nesting at the park. Most of the bird strike information I have found concerns fixed wing aircraft but apparently there is some concern involving helicopters as well. As things exist now with minimal air traffic in and out of NAS the nesting bird colony might not be too much of a threat. However there are plans to bring a new Carrier to the base and with it there will be an increase many types of aircraft over flying the park and surrounding areas.

But the possible conflict might not be necessary. There may be a way to rebuild the colony on Bird Island in Nassau Sound. Before the carrier can use the base there must be a massive dredging project. In fact the dredging may remove lots of sand and bedrock from the river channel. What if some of that could be used to enlarge the traditional nesting site? That seems like a win, win, win situation. If the colony had a better place to nest accessible only by boat and located in a designated wildlife area its protections would be greatly enhanced. The city could better focus its preservation measures on less invasive species. The safety of navel aviators would be increased by relocating the colony and the park would remain open to the general public year round with minimal, seasonal necessary closures which would require less effort to monitor and reduced maintenance for upkeep.          

Bird strike video:

http://www.youtube.com/v/gc-XiO4ojzk&hl=en_US&fs=1&

http://www.youtube.com/v/uYNpB-8_BSo&hl=en_US&fs=1&

The helicopter minimum operating elevations for the military is often 300 ft in crowded areas. There is some danger to helicopters from bird strikes. Generally engines, blades and wind screens are the most common strike problems.  Get enough small birds in the intake and the helo will be landing shortly and often hard. Starlings have taken out airliners. Helo engine air intakes and compressor blades are small compaired to most airliners.

Blade damage can happen when the blades hit something.  Duh?...... It manifests itself in broken and missing pockets, dents in the spars and tip damage. Most of those can be extensive in the big boys like the HH-53 and still not crash the aircraft.  But some of the smaller ones like the HH-65 the coast guard uses might not be able to take the same hits.

Hits to the tail rotor or its linkages can be devastating to all helicopters except the HH-43 and the Russian Ka-27. (no tail rotor)

But more so hits that either come through the windshield or startle the pilot. Obviously through the windshield can be a bad thing. But the startling the pilot with nerves of steel is not normal. However, back in the old days for one reason or the other our CH-3C pilots used to dump collective, the blades drooped and cut off the pitot tubes over the cockpit. Losing one's airspeed indication is a bad thing. Once the ground in Thailand they took pitot tubes, and the roof of the cockpit.

Helicopters generally fly slower than the jets. However, I'm reminded about a session in the O-club where one of our pilots was arguing with a RF-4 pilot about the relative merrits of the two aircraft. The RF pilot lost the bet that the final approach speed was higher in the helicopter. You see the RF routinely made final approach around 100kts. The CH-3 made final approach over the runway threshold at 110kts.

Kite, the birds have been nesting in the park since the 1960's to my personal knowledge, probably as long as there has been shelly sand there.  The biggest change has been the beginning of nesting of laughing gulls in the past twenty years or so.  They have actually pushed out some of the previous nesters and are larger and more numerous than a lot of the earlier ones too.  Blasted feathered rats, they are.

Jet engines are tested for "foreign object ingestion" but something the size of a Canada Goose as in the Hudson River case is just too much.

overstreet,

holy crap! I had no idea that helicopters were that susceptible to damage. I just assumed that the slower flight would minimize the damage.

Dog walker,

I think that most of the previous species that nested in the park were smaller birds like American Oyster catchers or black skimmers. Most of these birds fly below the 300 foot mark. The gull and tern populations are the big concern here. The populations of these birds have increased to a very high point with tens of thousands of individual birds in a single flock. You can see them all rise up at once in huge numbers at any time of the day. Laughing Gull populations may be having a hard impact on other bird species since they eat eggs and kill young birds even of their own species.

Lunican,

Those videos tell a very disturbing tale.  Even a small bird can bring down a large engined aircraft. There might be real reason for concern here as the bird colony increases
I also found a page that featured a story about a small jet that was nearly lost because of a bird strike. The bird was identified as a Scaup (sp) which is a small duck. I am beginning to realize that  bird strikes can cause major damage even if the bird's weight is small.       

Kite, You are absolutely correct about the impact of the Laughing Gulls on the other birds and their tendency to form huge dense flocks.

Things are much worse when the flocks of birds are actually on the airports.  In addition to noise makes, etc. some bases and airports are using rescue Border Collies to drive them away.  Having a predator run them off seems to have more lasting effects than just noise.  One of the reasons  that having dogs running in the park is so harmful.

Dog walker,

For the last couple of years I also noticed that the area inside the jetty has built up too. It has always had some birds there but several bird watchers have noted that there are much bigger flocks there than in the past. I just looked at the alignment of the runway in relation to how the park sits (google maps). If you draw a straight line across the river the path of aircraft would be right between two dense concentrations of birds. I think that aircraft might be at about 300 to 400 feet as they cross the park. Of course birds won't follow any human designed flight path or stay below a particular height. Those things are controlled by the requirements of the species. I have also seen an increase in the number of Turkey Vultures probably because of the increased supply of sick or dead bird chicks in the park during nesting. Those things are big and I remembered years ago that a pilot told me that they can even take down slow flying planes. I was wondering if birds will show up on radar. It might be a silly point but if pilots could be forewarned they could divert before they got into a flock.

Also the use of dogs seems to be more humane than trapping or killing. If the birds were not allowed to nest at the park for a couple of years they might  get back into the habit of nesting away from the airport on Bird Island again. That might even be good for other species like A. Oystercatchers  that have been under pressure from the overcrowded, aggressive nesting gulls. I do not think that the use of dogs or incidental unleashed dogs after nesting has begun would be an appropriate answer. Any such program should only be used before the nesting has begun. It should be noted that even with the human presence in the park the there were often tracks of raccoons, opossums, bob cats and even reported sightings of foxes in the area where the gull colony has had explosive growth. After the use of fire to remove undergrowth on the widest piece of the park those animals or evidence of them was no longer there. I think reintroduction of natural predation could be a solution but of course there would be no way to protect the nesting desired species like oystercatchers.         

Quote from: Dog Walker on February 24, 2010, 01:44:08 PM..........Jet engines are tested for "foreign object ingestion" but something the size of a Canada Goose as in the Hudson River case is just too much.......

Yes you are right.  My dad designed a air cannon for that use back in the 60's for Allison. They were testing engines with frozen chickens, snow balls, ice balls and other things. I on the other hand was just a trained jet engine accident investigator.

The problem is one of impact from the object. Yes, and big birds do more damage. They make big holes and bend big blades and stators. But not all engines are created the same. A external bypass fan on a big airliner is different than the smaller fan on a biz jet or the still smaller compressor blades on a small helio. The big bypass fans often take the damage and keep going. They sling the small stuff to the outside and out the bypass cowling. 

But little birds can damage airplanes too. A flock of starlings at any speed can choke the intake and cause a compressor stall in most any engine. It just takes more starlings for the big ones.   A compressor stall can cause damage or flame out the engine. A low altitude flame out may lead to an early  landing.  A compressor stall is the miss routing of air flow. Instead of the air passing over the stages of fan blades, to the gas producer blades, to the buner cans, to the turbine wheels, to the exhaust it often belches with a bang and flows out the intake. With luck it will blow the "clog" out and keep running. There are controls that limit these things. But with all that belching often comes damage to small parts that spin close together. If blades (rotating) and stators (fixed) start hitting each other the engine gets damaged and sometimes comes apart. If it lasts too long things start to melt. If the airflow in a burner can is disrupted too long flame touches the can liner and things go bad.

Don't worry though it doesn't happen all the time. You could also choke to death on a hot dog sold by the cart vender near your office. 

aircraft and man


http://www.videosift.com/video/Man-vs-Jet-Engine

Kite, big birds and flocks of birds do show up on radar, but I doubt that they would show up in time on a takeoff or landing to do any good.

I thought I was being run down in the fog by an idiot boater once will going down the Intracoastal waterway.  Radar blob was coming right at me at high speed and I was beginning to feel something warm down my leg, when a brown pelican broke out of the fog and  flew just over the boat.  So I KNOW that a big wet bird will show up on radar!

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome aboard Pan Am direct service to Portland, the weather at our destination, temprature in Portland is 67 degrees with gusty cross winds...

During our trip today we will be cruising at an altitude of 7 feet, and a speed of 79 miles per hour.  You will notice there was no safety appliance or procedure drill, and as always you are free to move about the cabins. Rather then salted nuts in a foil pouch and a plastic cup, we thought we would offer a choice of full course meals in our restaurant with changing views. Our feature of the day will be the baked salmon served on a cedar plank, or the New York steak served with our special wine sauce and cooked to order. You will also find the lounge is open and we are serving your favorite drinks, snacks and light meals. Music this evening is provided by Cracker Dare's Rodeo Combo. Our paramedic's station is always open should you have any special or medical needs, and the hair stylist will be with us from 2 PM until 5 PM today, in the solarium salon.

Bird hunters may check their shotguns as baggage at the ticket counter.

THANKS FOR FLYING AMTRAK... :o

"The glide-angle on a powerless 737 Heavy, is equal to the flight qualities of a cast iron Frisbee..." ;)

OCKLAWAHA ;D

From msnbc.com:

Amtrak train kills 2 girls near Philadelphia
Teens struck by high-speed train traveling from Boston to Washington, D.C.

updated 4:19 p.m. CT, Thurs., Feb. 25, 2010

PHILADELPHIA - A high-speed Amtrak train struck and killed two teenage girls near Philadelphia.

Officials say the Acela train traveling from Boston to Washington, D.C., hit the two girls around 10:30 a.m. Thursday in Norwood, about 10 miles southwest of Philadelphia.

Interboro School District Superintendent Nancy Hacker says the 10th-graders had been in school earlier in the day, but left at some point. She doesn’t know what they were doing on the tracks, which aren’t far from the school. A third girl was with them and reported the accident.

Seagulls, Robbin's, Eagles, Owl's, Pelican's, Chevy's, Ford's, Harleys, Big Rig Trailers, and Teen Age Girls, or Colombian Peasants, don't generally cause the trains engines to flame out, with a corresponding sudden catastrophic loss of altitude!

OCKLAWAHA

Ocklawaha,

I guess what you are suggesting is that we replace the military aircraft with rail cars. I know the pentagon makes some strange decisions but I doubt fighter trains will take the place of fighter planes. So all jokes aside,
dose anyone else feel that the increase in bird populations at Huguenot Park, particularly gulls and terns and associated larger predatory birds, could pose a real threat in this case? Would it make more sense to try to redirect the colony to the traditional breeding areas in Nassau Sound before the navy steps up flight operations at Mayport? I hope that we can get some input form a few service pilots. They are the ones who will be dealing with an increased and possibly unnecessary threat.

By the way When I looked up both areas on google maps I found the images of the park and sound to be updated. These more recent photos show the large area of sand that has built up at the base of the jetty on the river side. BUT EVEN MORE INTERESTING was the area at the north end of Tlabot Island. Since the last time I looked the sand bar behind Bird Island has grown substantially. The potential nesting ground is almost three times the area of Huguenot Park. This area is almost two miles from the closest public access and the areas will never have automotive traffic. Boaters fish in the mouth of the small creek and a few people might walk the distance. That means there is a really great place for the colony to nest outside most human influence and intrusion. The best part is that it is so close, 4.5 miles north, to the park but still outside the flight path of military planes.         

Kite,  Has the Navy issued a report about having problems with the birds from the Park?  How many jets or helicopters have crashed from Mayport NAS because of bird strike.

It is beginning to seem that your real concern and point of starting this thread is to find some reason or way to ease or eliminate the restrictions on access by cars to parts of the park.  "There is another place the birds can nest and they are a potential danger to the Navy aircraft so lets run them off and open the park completely to recreational uses."  Is this where you are going?

The birds are going to nest where they want to nest and we cannot practically or legally try to do anything about it.

The yotes work good on house cats too.

It seems that after several hundred years of killing off the dumb coyotes we have perfect demonstration of evolution in action.  They used to be diurnal pack animals and are now lone nocturnal animals that have vastly expanded their territory.

I saw that picture of the coyote on the subway a few weeks ago and fell out of my chair.

Dog walker,

You know my position well from all my previous posts on this forum from the thread "Huguenot Park your access today". But for any one who might be joining the show mid way I will state it again, no problem. Also to all who have not read the postings on that thread I encourage you to do so if you have an interest in what happens to Huguenot Park.

I am defiantly against any effort to turn Huguenot Park into a bird sanctuary. It is a stupid idea and there is no need for it. It disenfranchises the people of this city. Turning Huguenot Park into a bird sanctuary is exactly what the Audubon Society has intended to do from the outset in-spite of claims to the contrary. Actions speak louder than words. Oh but wait...... Is it really an Audubon thing or is there a hidden agenda? Why do the paid Audubon lobbyists regale the ARC in Tallahassee with stories about the dangerous public safety issues that clearly do not exist? It is clearly safer to walk down the beach at the park than it is to drive to the park. These issues or I should say non-issues, should not concern the wildlife and environmental groups.   
   Do you know that for a 24 hour period the ARC sub committee (chaired by and populated by many Audubon sympathizers) voted to close over 50% of the park permanently? There would have been no access, pedestrian included, to any of the area along the inside north shore. The other end of the line would have been drawn at the north end of zone ten. Approximately one third of the ocean side would have been turned into a bird only area all year round.
  They quickly backed off the pedestrian restriction but still pushed for the year round ban on beach driving in almost two thirds of the park. Only a last minute e-mail and phone campaign was able to reverse the decision in the full committee meeting the next day. There is clearly a second agenda behind the effort that has nothing to do with wildlife issues. They have fought to change the existing  seasonal, flexible restrictions into  permanent year round restrictions. They were responsible for the removal of the pet owning public even when certain areas and seasonal use could have been maintained. In a recent discussion concerning the next set of restrictions about to be put in place the issue of boats like small sailboats  and jet skies was brought up. There is really only one good place in the park that has deep access in calm water. That is the north point across from the bridge. When asked why that access should be closed the reply was "People are just going to have to give something up." What they mean is if they can remove this user group there will be less need to maintain automotive access to the point. The collateral damage from disenfranchising those groups are fishermen who would have to walk about a mile to the best fishing in the park. They have pushed for and gotten the wording of the management plan to include the words "recreational use".  I their view it is unsafe to swim, wade, fish, boat, surf, kitesurf or jet ski any where north of zone 11 on the Atlantic side or on the inside pond area. Whatever activity you (I mean you in general) participate in your on the hit list. They will say you will just have to give it up.

Now I can understand the Audubon addressing the issue of protection for baby birds that fledge on the beaches in the summer from dogs and cars. I can understand the Audubon pushing for greater restriction of access to the vegetative center of the dunes and their push to increase that area. I can understand the Audubon's  restrictive post and rope system that keeps people from driving on the mud flats near flocks of feeding birds. I can understand the effort to protect the Red Knots feeding on the shoals between Huguenot and Talbot Island during the migrations. All of those things have been address and the city has responded quickly to implement them.

So why is the Audubon still pushing to remove more people from a non environmentally sensitive area? Why does the Audubon want to make permanent the seasonal and flexible restrictions already employed? Why does the Audubon want a row of permanent posts installed across the point  from in the water on the inlet side across from the bridge all the way (eastward) to a point out in the surf on the beach side? The goal is not to protect birds. That has already been done. The goal is to shut down the park piece by piece, user group by user group until there is no reason for the city to maintain it.

Now I gotta say that I think that driving on the shoals at low tide is a silly thing. The salt water destroys cars. I know I have had two that suffered heavy rust damage. I never drove on the shoals and only had to drive through water at extremely high tides on rare occasions. Most of the time I just wait for the tide to drop which takes about 45 mins after it reaches the high mark. There is the possibility of cars being stranded and destroyed by the incoming tide as well. Potentially that could be an environmental hazard. Over the years we have seen cars completely covered by water. The claim is that the oil and gas that leaks into the water is harmful. No doubt! However I do have to say that now that I think about it I have never seen any fluid leaks or oil spilled from submerged cars out there. Perhaps there are check valves or seals that prevent that from happening. If so the environmental argument doesn't seem to hold much water (pun intended). Any mechanics out there with an answer? Do cars have safety devices to prevent gas and oil leaks?

So now that I have stated my position, given references to the other thread and been completely open and forthright (something the Audubon is not) I think it is time to re-ask the questions concerning aircraft and the large (and increasing) bird colony at Huguenot Park. Is there any danger? Is that danger increasing as the colony grows? Are there ways to mitigate the danger without resorting to destruction of the colony or individual birds?

The traditional nesting grounds are 4.5 miles north of the park, well outside the flight path of aircraft at MPNAS. The area has increased in size just like Huguenot, is actually larger now than it was several years ago and larger that the current nesting area at the park. We were told recently that it was a surprise to see terns nesting at Huguenot Park because the area does not fit the normal description of natural tern nest sites. The controlled burn was an attempt to adapt more area to tern nesting. Check out the pictures of both sites on google maps. The area near the north end of Talbot island behind Bird Island is  larger and more closely matches the description of traditional tern nesting sites. From Cornell Universitie's web site.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Royal_Tern/lifehistory

"The Royal Tern makes its nest scrape on the ground on low-lying islands."

So why make an argument that Huguenot Park is the only place for these nesting birds. Look at the map on the Cornell site. Do you see where the traditional nesting occurs? Its not even in this state! These claims are being used to try to convince the public that restrictions at Huguenot Park are some sort of last ditch attempt to save these disappearing species of birds. It is just not true. If anything the numbers are up. It seems that the birds are more adaptable than thought in the past. After all they moved to Huguenot Park after Bird Island was washed over storms about ten years ago. Now that the area has reformed and grown why not do a controlled burn on Talbot Island? Why should the public sacrifice the last and only place in our area where true access is possible? the answer is simple. Its not about birds (Huguenot Park, Matanzas) or turtles (Jacksonville Beach, Ponte Vedra, etc) or dune mice Anastaisia. Its not about safety of the general public or about environmental issues. IT IS ABOUT BEACH DRIVING! 

But, if the attempts to encourage a "super colony" of nesting gulls and terns is a potential danger to aircraft in the area we should not discount the inquiry even if it comes from people who are willing to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough!                               
             

Coyotes have been recently seen and heard in some North East Fl. areas.I am told that they are generally a shy animal. It is unlikely that any predation take place at the from them.

Ocklawaha,

I got your humor right off the bat. I just tried to play off it. You might like the fact that the Audubon suggested a tram system for access to HP. The only problem was that there is no place to run the tram from. 

Quote from: Dog Walker on February 26, 2010, 04:36:07 PM
It seems that after several hundred years of killing off the dumb coyotes we have perfect demonstration of evolution in action.  They used to be diurnal pack animals and are now lone nocturnal animals that have vastly expanded their territory.

I saw that picture of the coyote on the subway a few weeks ago and fell out of my chair.

Coyote's are the number 2 problem in my desert acreage out near 29 Palms California. The number one spot goes to the damn Cougars (the 4 legged kind). THEY EAT PEOPLE!

Actually Coyote and Bison are both native Florida animals. Back in the 70's there was talk about trying to reestablish buffalo on Paynes Prairie Preserve just south of Gainesville. Does anyone know if that happened? I always had my doubts as I found out while living in Oklahoma they are the MOST deadly animal in North America, apparently accounting for more deaths or maiming then some combination of any two other animals. I know that the OK Park system has warning signs everywhere telling one how to react if you encounter one. For you BBQ lovers, buffalo is worth every penny of the extra cost... pay for 3 pounds, cook 3 pounds and SERVE 3 pounds! It doesn't shrink or have any fat to burn off.

In the desert, coyotes are still seen in occasional packs, a time when they are most dangerous. When they move into an area, they pretty much clean out any domestic dogs or cats, as well as anything else from guppy's to goats. They usually run away, but I wouldn't want to bet my future on it. I do know people that have been stalked but never attacked, it's got to be unnerving to see one following you on a long walk to the neighbors. Airports that are isolated, such as Orlando, or airports on islands and peninsula's should be okay with them as their forays into their surroundings could be better controlled. I would think deer fencing, and wildlife undercrossings would be needed for approach roads. Wonder what an adult coyote could do to a 757's engines?


OCKLAWAHA

I first saw coyotes in North Florida between Lake City and Live Oak back in the '70's.  They have obviously expanded their territory and adapted to living around humans.

I wonder how much of their spread is due to the lack of their predators like cougars and wolves?

I think coyotes are way too smart to get around a running jet engine.

Watched people in Yellowstone actually walk up to bison and try to pet them!  More bison around maybe the number of idiots would decline and hopefully the price of bison steaks would decline.  Yum!

If you drive west on I-10 to Mississippi half of the road kill appears to be coyotes

(http://www.foxnews.com/images/365530/0_61_041508_Cougar01.jpg)
Trust the scientist boys and girls, the Florida Panther is extinct!

The rumors of the demise of the Florida "panther" is greatly exaggerated! Like the Tasmanian Tiger, the animal crazies are completely off the mark on this one, they claim "extinct", "20 individuals", "7 individuals", remaining... What they fail to calculate is there is a whole bunch of State north of the everglades, moreover there is more real estate north of that. Maybe it's because my Oklahoma and California farmette's are over run with the damn cougars (4 legged - oh darn!). The Okefenokee, Trail Ridge, even Julington Creek area's are full of them. A Florida wildlife officer and I walked onto the peninsular where Julington Creek splits, and within 10 feet, saw 3 Set's of tracks, each of a distinct size. While renting a place on the golf course in Lake Park, I likewise saw a scratch, and then my wife and daughter saw the big cat. She used the side yard as a passage from a heavily wooded lake region, to the country club where dozens of little foxes could be seen at night. I was amazed that in her use of the pathway, her scheduling keeping was better then CSX. EVERY night, same time, same place!

Funniest part of this story is that before we knew for certain we were dealing with a Florida Panther we had my Colombian sister-in-law staying with us. Every evening she would walk out, through the side yard, onto the edge of the golf course then she'd circle the block. She walked her little rat terrier which was a high strung dog. On evening the little dog took off toward a hedge and was barking like crazy. Sonia stopped short of the hedge when she saw a "really funny looking animal, I think... somebody's cat!" She told me, "She bother the dog, so I tell her go! go! but she not go! I get mad so I kick and tell her OOSH OOSH! but she not go, she stands up, really big ugly cat."  How funny is that? The girl that kicked at a panther and lived to tell it. Later when she got a full view of the cat bounding the road in a single leap, she nearly fainted. BTW, though it was in Georgia, the wildlife officers didn't even care enough to record it. Florida was interested, but I don't know if the "expert" ever got out to ask that cat how she thumbed a ride up from Miami? My guess is AMTRAK.



OCKLAWAHA

When I was in Atlanta in 2004 they had a problem with yotes killing house cats in Buckhead. I saw one east of Atlanta crossing the road.

In the Panhandle I worked a project there at Port St Joe and they were around there. I saw one at the old pappermill site and one along the road. You don't see them long. The yote only lets you see them briefly and usually on the road at night. At the house I'd hear them yipping to each other out in the woods. Spooky when you realize they are more than one around the house. Something was always digging up my fish carcasses. I always suspected the coyotes were doing it.

I think if a coyote got hit on the runway it would be because the plane surprised it on landing and hit it.  It happens to deer, but they freeze in the lights. Yotes look a little disgusted at you over their shoulder and they trot off, gone quickly.

Not all of the Floirda Panthers are panthers. Some of them might be cougars from out west. They had an experimental breeding program back in the 90s. They were trying to boost the breed with western DNA.

Quote from: Overstreet on February 27, 2010, 09:56:20 PM
I think if a coyote got hit on the runway it would be because the plane surprised it on landing and hit it.  It happens to deer, but they freeze in the lights. Yotes look a little disgusted at you over their shoulder and they trot off, gone quickly.

Not all of the Floirda Panthers are panthers. Some of them might be cougars from out west. They had an experimental breeding program back in the 90s. They were trying to boost the breed with western DNA.

The coyotes manage to get across the path of automobiles out in California everyday. Some highways are littered with them certain times of the year. This still beats Oklahoma, where the roads are splattered with skunks about half of the year.

I used to get the newspaper called "CORYI", a publication of Florida wildlife that updated and tracked the doings of the Panthers 4 times a year. Don't know if they still publish it, but it was interesting, and I remember the cross breeding efforts with the western puma. The Florida cat tends to be a wee bit smaller then the western counterpart, but I'm not sure that would matter if one had his head in it's jaws.

The scientific name of the Florida Panther is, Puma Felis Concolor Coryi, which breaks down:

Puma - A South American Indian word for "mighty magic animal"
Felis - From the genus of the Felidae or true cats
Concolor - Of a uniform solid color
Coryi - From Doctor Coryi that identified the Florida subspecies

The Western or Northern cat is scientifically, Puma Felis Concolor Linnaeus

Per Above but "Linnaeus" - From, Karl Linné. 1707-1778 Swedish botanist and founder of the classification system for plants and animals.

As Lake Park is on the state line south of Valdosta, I doubt it is one of the western cousins that were brought in. My guess is there are several hundred that range from about Brunswick-Fernandina Beach-Baldwin-Palatka, westward to Thomasville-Tallahassee-St. Marks-Dunnellon, and throughout our large state and national forests and parks. In spite of the number of small towns, rural farms and farm to market highways, we have far less population then South Florida does. I think that translates into fewer sightings, fewer road kills, better habitat, and a food supply much easier to access.


OCKLAWAHA

We were driving back from Tampa on  I-75 a number of years ago when somewhere just south of Ocala we passed a panther sitting on the side of the road calmly watching the traffic go by.  It was broad daylight and gave us one of those "Did we really see what we though we saw?" moments.  They are definitely not limited to the Everglades or Big Cypress.

One of the police officers that used to work the park said that he got a glimpse of what could have been a panther crossing the road near the park and that some big tracks were sometimes seen in the park near the gate.

All this is really cool but lets bring the topic back to focus on the question of possible danger to aircraft from bird strikes. Are there any pilots out there who might have some insight about the possibility of birds strikes resulting from the proximity of these bird colonies? How far away from the airfield do they need to be before the risk is minimal? I know that this is a seasonal problem and collisions between aircraft and birds can occur almost any where at any time.  Right now there are very few gulls or terns at the park (in the hundreds). But, what would the risk be like if the colony continues to increase as it has in past several years? Last year there were Thousands of adult Laughing Gulls, conservatively somewhere between 8 to 10 thousand adults, and thousands of terns, I think the estimate was about 3000 adults. If the numbers increase again this year as they have in the past three years there could be as many as 15,000 adult gulls and over 5000 terns. This does not include the numbers of vultures or larger predatory birds attracted to the colonies. They would fly at greater altitudes and cover the area more evenly. Would a dense flock of 20,000 or so birds the size of medium chickens at altitudes up to 1000 feet be a problem. If you draw a straight line from the end of the runway the line passes between the two densest flocks of birds in the park at the height of the nesting season. The line is very close to the main colony near the point and an aircraft on that line would pass within about 2000 feet of the center of both those flocks on either side. I think that there may be a tendency of (identified) military pilots to remain quiet on these issues because informal discussions could result in problems for commanding officers. But I bet that there are more than a few ex-military airmen and women that have had experience with this issue if not here then in other places.

On a side note I was watching a PBS special about the diminishing numbers of seals on certain Pacific islands. In one scene a small twin engine plane takes off from a dirt runway through a flock of birds. If you watch it you can see at least one bird is hit by the blades of the prop. I think the plane might have been a Piper Aztek. From what I read the speed for take off is around 100 mph and it climbs at around 120. If that bird had hit the windshield could it have caused enough damage to crash the plane? What are the normal take off and landing speeds of typical military aircraft in and out of Mayport NAS? Under normal circumstances what would the altitude of those planes be one mile out from the airport?