Pheasant suicide at 70 mph (ish)

While riding home after work, a pheasant decided to fly onto my left shin/cooling fin. A bizarre experience for sure. Four hours later, my leg feels very warm and is starting to bruise. It did make me wonder if anyone else has biking/animal incidents? Ray

Yep. I had a pheasant run into the offside cylinder head on an R850R at 60mph. I squashed a squirrel on a Z550GT. A badger smashed the belly-pan off a GPz550. A pigeon flew into my left shoulder as was travelling at 100mph an the A14. Another pigeon flew into my chest on the North Circular. I hit a massive deer at walking-pace on an ST1100, I managed to slow down quite a bit. Almost stuffed a Bandit into a field whilst trying to avoid a muntjack.

In fact, muntjacks feature quite heavily in these scenerios from my biking past..... I've hit a few rabbits and stoats, too. I don't go looking for 'em! I've just done a LOT of miles and don't drive a car.

Ouch. I've had a fox shoot out in front of me and I rode over the poor sod, I had no time to react. The bike jumped and I near shit myself but got away clean!

Many years ago (1999ish) whilst thrashing through the lanes of Epping, a friend of mine braked hard to avoid a mouse on the road. Unfortunately, he then deviated into the path of an owl that was swooping down to pick up the mouse. The owl made a massive mess of his fairing (slabby GSX-R) and almost reduced him to tears - he was a bit of a hippy and mortified at killing such a beautiful creature.

Shit happens.

I once got sworn at by a peevish owl sitting on a branch.......

Yes, it was suffering from Irritable Owl Syndrome. *ahem*

But seriously, a mate of mine years back was hit in the mouth by a pheasant whilst wearing an open face crash helmet at about 70. Broken jaw, missing front teeth and he fell backwards off the bike (which was a write-off).

I head butted  a small bird of prey that flew out of a wooded area into my brand new crash helmet on the way to aber last year. I was doing about 80, it left its claw marks across the visor.

Bees hurt enough, anything larger/heavier can only be worse... thankfully I have managed to avoid such things.

Almost hit a deer, but braked very hard and missed it (somehow) by a whisker. Hit a swallow at about 70mph but luckily the helmet took the hit, blood and feathers all over the side and top of helmet though. Then a few weeks later a pheasant flew out at me on a rainy day and my shoulder took the brunt of the impact. It was sore most of the day but loosened off - my work is quite physically demanding so that helped - I think?? Then another pheasant attacked my leg another day and lost the fight. So so far, birds-0 , CB 500 -3 is the score.

I almost hit a deer, I was taking it slow about 40mph on a stretch of road that I'm normally doing about 80ish. If I was doing my normal speed it would have been a completely different storey. I've had a pheasant skim the top of my helmet and that's only because I pheasanted ducked.