October 6, 2007 I had my head under the passenger side foot panel (cleaning for the scionvip at Englishtown, NJ - Raceway Park) when a bird flew directly into the car hitting me in the side/head/chest. Not know what was happening I jumped up and let out a yell ….. kind of like …. “AHHHHHH” – as I swatted it down I then was able to comprehend what in the hell just happened to me. The bird was so scared that he did not move for at least 5minutes and in reality it could have been ten minutes. I got right up next to him and asked him why he would do such a thing and he didn’t reply. HE WAS NOT MOVING! If you walked directly up to him his eyes went up (as if you are talking to someone a lot taller then you) and beak went up (a self defense move). After a few minutes snapping my fingers to get him to move to the side and telling him I had to keep working on my car ( I wanted him to get away from under the door ) I thought enough was enough and went inside to find my camera. This guy surely was wanting his picture taken because he did not move throughout 6 pictures and 3 short videos (but i just included the better shots and 1 video).
After reviewing the timeline ….this bird was on the ground ….in that spot for at least ten minutes. If you see him around watch out and keep your distance. He has no problem trying to jack your car or intimate peaceful Toyota owners. If you are saying WTF while reading this .... join the group ..... I was saying that while the bird hit me and while taking his pictures. Here are his mug shots and thug video:

http://www.detailedhosting.com/users..._me/bird01.avi

 

Nice! Pretty color all our birds here in the PNW are brown or seagulls...

 

I laughed at that part. Crazy bird lol.

 

it wanted to be your pet!

 

what a studly bird you found.

 

its a female cardinal

 

It obviously finds your tC a better means of transportation than flying with its own wings

 

we have vultures lol..

that bird probably had a stroke or something, cute though.

 

You guys are funny - im laughing now but it fealt like a car accident when it happened .... shock is a wild feeling. I used to have a bird so having one fly onto me ...but having an animal come out of a tree and run into me .... ha.

I was also wondering if this really was an outdoor bird or a bird that was someones pet. If he was a pet I wonder if he was trying to land on me. He took a #2 on the driveway while he was parked there.

 

I did - i wanted to know why he would do that. If he wanted to help I could have had him help clean the inside.

 

The top picture was taken 3 feet from him - he didnt move so I put the camera down and he opened his mouth to tell me to back off. I took a few other snaps but i didnt expect these to come out as good as they did. ha.

 

aww cute!

 

I think it was a female cardinal. Check out this picture and its pretty darn close:

http://z.about.com/d/birding/1/0/h/q...seup0111b1.jpg

 

PostPosted: 10/8/07 7:11AM btw i beat you too it on what kind of bird it is :D

 

This was my story for today at work - I had to tell a few people because the odds arent that good of this happening again. I heard a bird calling when walking in from work and it was a pretty big bluejay - That could very well been the reason why the cardinal looked beat up. Ive seen blue jays and male cardinals go at it pretty crazily for abnormally long (atleast a few minutes) - You would think one would get tired of the other and fly away but ive seen them fight and keep going at it.