Yesterday, the wifey and me took the RV to a small Swedish town to have dinner. After the return flight, as usual we parked the RV outside our hangar so we could wash the bugs off.
While we where working with that, I noticed a small bird which was sitting on the propeller on a plane in a nearby hangar belonging to the local aeroclub. A few seconds later, the bird was gone.
Fair enough, but a few minutes later, I noticed another bird sitting on the same spot.
I became alittle suspicious and we went over the plane to have a closer look and here's a few pics of what we found:
Everything looks pretty normal from here, right?
And here...?
But what about now...??
Yep, there's definetely something in here which is NOT manifactured by Piper...
We took the cowling off the plane and here's what we saw:
The little birdie had picked the right spot too: right in front of the oilcooler...
I'm glad the nest was empty, otherwise we would've turned into babybird-killers.... or maybe egg-destroyers...
It was alittle sad to destroy this very nice home for the bird, because it was so very well made and it must have been ALOT of work!
But we took all the bit's & pieces out, finished the job by using a vacuum-cleaner which I keep in my hangar, put the cowling back on and then the trusty old Piper where ready for another flight.
We also put spunges in the intakes and wrote a BIG note about the spunges and hung it on the propeller.
So I guess the moral of this story is: take a REAL close look in the intakes when you do the preflight inspection....
PS: I'll check how long it was since that plane flew and post an update in a couple of days. It'll be interesting to know how long time it takes for a bird to build a nest.
As you can see, there was feathers along the edges, so my guess is that this nest has had both eggs and new birds in it.
While we where working with that, I noticed a small bird which was sitting on the propeller on a plane in a nearby hangar belonging to the local aeroclub. A few seconds later, the bird was gone.
Fair enough, but a few minutes later, I noticed another bird sitting on the same spot.
I became alittle suspicious and we went over the plane to have a closer look and here's a few pics of what we found:
Everything looks pretty normal from here, right?
And here...?
But what about now...??
Yep, there's definetely something in here which is NOT manifactured by Piper...
We took the cowling off the plane and here's what we saw:
The little birdie had picked the right spot too: right in front of the oilcooler...
I'm glad the nest was empty, otherwise we would've turned into babybird-killers.... or maybe egg-destroyers...
It was alittle sad to destroy this very nice home for the bird, because it was so very well made and it must have been ALOT of work!
But we took all the bit's & pieces out, finished the job by using a vacuum-cleaner which I keep in my hangar, put the cowling back on and then the trusty old Piper where ready for another flight.
We also put spunges in the intakes and wrote a BIG note about the spunges and hung it on the propeller.
So I guess the moral of this story is: take a REAL close look in the intakes when you do the preflight inspection....
PS: I'll check how long it was since that plane flew and post an update in a couple of days. It'll be interesting to know how long time it takes for a bird to build a nest.
As you can see, there was feathers along the edges, so my guess is that this nest has had both eggs and new birds in it.
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