Birdstrike!

Well now we've finished moving house I am quite happily back to a routine of cycling to and from work. To be honest it's a brilliant way to wake up in the morning, and of course it helps keep the weight off and makes me feel less guilty about the bacon and stilton panini for lunch at work.

The trouble is that I'm doing overtime at the moment, which means I am leaving work after dark and negotiating farm tracks. To be honest this is not nearly as bad as it sounds because the front light I currently have installed on Gertie blasts out an almost infeasible amount of light for a small box with 5 LEDs on the front. I can easily see well enough to follow the path and to brake or avoid obstacles.

We are, however, getting to the stage where the warmer weather brings out the dog emptiers and the autographs some of them leave behind on the path. Of course, the further one gets from Didcot the fewer of these there are, and so I have been able to find routes that avoid the worst bits of footpath in favour of using the road. One simply has to take care, keep ones eyes open, and assume that any dark shape that is a person will probably have one or more other untethered dark shapes with them, ready to jump out directly into the path of anyone else coming down the path.

To be fair, some of the dog walkers I have seen in the last couple of weeks have gone out of their way to make sure their dogs are well out of my way and indeed have them impressively well trained, so I really can't complain too much. Most of them are cheerful, friendly, and happy to exchange a "good morning" as I roll past. Usually I can let my speed drop out of courtesy until I'm past, as opposed to having to slam on the brakes because darling Lindy the long wheelbase rat who can do no wrong has, out of stupidity, decided to lie down directly in front of my wheel.

Anyway, I digress, because what is more worthy of note was my ride home last night, which featured a very unusual lineup of animals. I saw three or four rabbits, two cats, both of which are species that have the good sense to get out of the way if there's something coming. I also nearly ran over a pheasant, and I've never seen one of those by night before. I certainly heard it for a good 200m before it leapt out in front of me; they have a very distinctive call.

The biggest first of that whole trip however was what happened just as I was leaving Chilton. There I was innocently cycling along when something struck my head, mostly on my helmet but also the area around my right eye. I never saw it coming, because there was no way that the light on my handlebars could have illuminated it, so there was no warning.

The impact didn't really hurt, but the dull "thunk!" came as a bit of a shock. At first I thought some kids had hit me with a ball of mud or manure, but when whatever it was appeared to bounce off I had to reconsider. After while I concluded that it must have been a bird. It had been soft, warm, and I wasn't scraping mud or manure off my face.

If it had been a shock to me, one can only imagine what the bird thought of the experience!

I guess it could have been a bat, but I was under the impression that bats were quite adept at avoiding collisions even in complete darkness. There was no quiet squeaky pronouncement of "Whoop whoop! Traffic! Pull up!".

So there we have it kids, another reason to wear a cycling helmet - birds.