I was hoping not to see birds. This is unusual. I was out of town, far from home, and when I travel, I check out the local birds. But there I was, face pressed against the window, thinking, “birds, don’t be there.” What’s the deal with that? I was on a plane speeding down a runway at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. I’d been in Manhattan all week (the reason for a gap in our “daily sightings” blog) and was heading home. As we left the gate, I remembered the plane that took off last January from LaGuardia and sucked a bunch of geese or starlings or who knows what, into its engines. The engines stopped running and the plane had to ditch in the Hudson River. It was a heroic act of piloting by the now-famous captain, “Sully” Sullenberger. You know the story, everyone survived, no need to elaborate. News coverage at the time pointed out that there’s no way planes can avoid rare and random bird hits. So there we were, same airport, same runway, same kind of plane, same time of day. I was a bird watcher, okay, watching hard for flocks of geese, flocks of anything. There were a few Herring Gulls in the distance, but nothing threatening. We rolled down the runway and lifted above LaGuardia without a problem. The plane was cramped and crowded, running two hours late, and had a couple of sneezing passengers. But there were no birds. That was good news.
