Peter wrote:
This is really an advertisement for an IR and oxygen…
I would rather say, for a ballistic recovery system. Not to heat up the old debate, but that is one case where it could help most of the times.
Good point on the chute.. Cirrus always mentioned a mid-air as a possibility and this event shows that it does not need to be another aircraft.
As to the vulture’s behaviour, there are quite a few of them where I live and rather than dive down, I have seen them stay on course and altitude mostly, making me deviate. But I’ve luckily never been just a few meters away, so probably when really close they dive down. Gulls and smaller birds dive down more aggressively and farther off it seems.
I’m also going to try and program into my system to pull up sharply when collision is imminent. As said above, if there is a hit, a lot better if from below. I may one day even be able to get of that senseless ADF antenna this way 
Two years ago my partner had a seagull strike with our TB-20 right on take off at Megara LGMG coastal airport some 200ft. above the runway.
This off course was a lighter bird and aircraft was at lower speed than the subject of this thread.
The seagull was veering off to the starboard side to avoid the aircraft and hit the wingtip.
The pilot did no evasive maneuver due to low speed and altitude and the delicate phase of the flight.
The pilot could not recall if the seagull was climbing or descending (to avoid) during the impact, he just saw it coming 2 seconds before impact.
Seagulls usually concentrate there as a stop close to the sea to rest, to look for food in soil next to the runway and to use the heat of the asphalt for resting or easier low level flight.
The airport does have a vehicle that uses the loudspeakers to send them away when they concentrate in big groups and the tower does warn the pilots if there is bird concentration. The specific bird was not part of a large group sitting/flying around.
It’s interesting that in the case of a sighting of a conflicting bird, the advice is to climb. Advice I received from an ex-RAF pilot at the AirProx Board in relation to the sighting of another plane is to do the opposite i.e. to dive. He gave this advice because the speed of relative altitude change is much greater in the dive than in the climb for GA planes, so more vertical distance is created by diving than by climbing (presuming that the other pilot does not also dive…) He went on to say that turning is slower too for creating distance…so the number one thing to do is to lose altitude (subject to terrain of course, and subject to not losing control or over-stressing the plane) whilst changing direction if that is also necessary. He also made clear that his advice was not official advice from the Board, but simply what he personally considered to be the best thing to do. (I don’t know if they also have an official line at the Board.)
So, if both things are right, we first need to assess the near-flying hazard as a bird or plane, and then take appropriate and it seems opposite action.
I had a relatively near miss with a red kite (Milvus Milvus) in the UK once whilst coming in to land, so not flying very fast. They are quite large flying beasties. The bird concerned in fact seemed completely unconcerned which I found surprising. I was expecting it to show signs of being scared and for it to perform some sort of evasive manoeuvre. Instead it just glided slightly away. Perhaps that’s because it was an expert in assessing converging paths in the air, or perhaps instead because it had a very very small brain…
The reason I climb when I see somebody or, much more often, when I get a TCAS warning but can’t see it but it is too late to go looking because I got the warning with just 1nm left, is because I reckon most people will dive or at least I can outclimb them, +3000fpm for a very short time or +1000fpm sustained 
The problem is that you never know what the other guy will do. For example if head-on you are supposed to turn right but I have had several who did the opposite, so climbing very fast was the best option.
Howard, I never liked to support the theory of small brains with birds that we learnt at school.
I use to compare it with the size of a 386 Desktop PC from 1985 and one of today’s smartphones. The navigational performance some birds are capable of cannot be explained with small brains in the sense that " size matters ".
Seagulls usually concentrate there as a stop close to the sea
Too bad that this bird was not concentrating enough though!
Howard wrote:
The bird concerned in fact seemed completely unconcerned which I found surprising. I was expecting it to show signs of being scared and for it to perform some sort of evasive manoeuvre.
Arne wrote:
petty distractions like humans’ poor imitation of their art.
Where is the LIKE button !!!
I believe aircraft speed has a big influence – birds are programmed for speeds up to 100+++ knots, but not high speeds.
Their eyesight is much better than mine – I never see rabbits from 1,000’, far less voles. Their reactions are faster. Their brains have evolved for flight control.
I flew through a very small cloud, and did not have time to react to the golden eagle filling the windscreen. It’s fast reactions and flying skill saved us both.
I’ve always, so far, found eagles and buzzards very sensible, at up to 115 kts cruise.
Bonxie’s (Great Skuas) will attack. I’ve watched at 80 kts, from the RHS, as one intercepted us, positioned to grab the expected feathers just behind the cockpit, and lost control in the unexpected propwash. Not near its nest, so just trying to get the low-flying white Jodel to regurgitate the fish it was assumed to be carrying back to its nest.
