August 2012 - Indian Airforce

ook showed the presence of a small population
of Japanese Quail in Bhutan. We referred back
to the incident, which had taken place near one
of the IAF bases on the border with Bhutan.
Obviously, the bird didn’t know the international
border, transgressed and paid with its life by
colliding with an aircraft guarding that border!!
European Hobby
SPECIES NO. OF
INCIDENTS
On the other hand, in
another result, the bird had
99% matching of DNA bar-code
with a rare bird called ‘African
Hobby’. The Team Leader in the
lab communicated the same
to us and told us about the
highly surprising result. This
raised eyebrows and made us
do some research. Once again,
SPECIES NO. OF
INCIDENTS
House Swift 15 Red Wattled Lapwing 1
Bats (Mammals-09 species) 12 Common Myna 1
Rock Pigeon 6 Rose Ringed Parakeet 1
Black Kite 4 Spotted Dove 1
Striated Swallow 4 Siberian Stonecat 1
Eurasian Thick-knee 4 Pelican 1
Steppe Eagle 3 White Backed Vulture 1
Martin 2 Blyth Reed Warbler 1
Tawny Eagle 1 White Eye Buzzard 1
Grey Francolin 1 Hobby 1
Swiftlet Species 1 Black Crowned Night Heron 1
Western Crowned Warbler 1 Greater Short Toed Lark 1
Lark Species 1 Horned Owl 1
Tawny Pipit 1 Laughing Dove 1
Kentish Plover 1 Accipiter Species 1
Eurasian Sparrow-Hawk 1 Japanese Quail 1
Crested Serpent Eagle 1 Dragon Fly (Insect) 1
Bird Species - 34
Highest Strikes- House Swift - 15
SPECIES WISE BIRD STRIKE DATA
after perusing many books, we found a record of
Eurasian Hobby (a related species) being spotted
in the region (and near the city of incident).
These fi ndings pointed to two aspects. The fi rst
is the precision of the advanced technology and
the second is the high probability of seemingly
improbable events. These two instances have
reinforced our faith in the technology of DNA
barcoding.
The technology has also helped us in solving
some of the long standing mysteries. One of the
stations had been experiencing repeated bird
strikes. Often, they used to fi nd two blood droplets
over the aircraft. Out of the numerous incidents,
they never got a carcass to identify the bird.
Repeated strikes made the station authorities
uncomfortable, and higher formations search for
INDIAN AIR FORCE 2 0 1 2 A u g u s t
Aerospace Safety 21