Ghostly bird strike. This is the dust left behind after a bird flew into our window. That's 14 inches, tip-to-tip.
My wife told me of a monumental bang while taking a nap. Thinking it was likely a bird striking the window, a sadly common occurrence here, she found this strange imprint. I had to take the picture late at night to get anything to come out at all—the photo was taken from the outside with flash, looking into a dark room. What you see, 14 inches from wingtip-to-wingtip, is what the bird left behind. I think it’s dust that was on the bird’s wings and body. You can see the outline of the wings, where the beak is, where the claws are, and even the outline of the tail feathers. I’ve never seen anything like this before! Oh…in case you’re wondering, we went looking for the bird, thinking a strike like this must’ve killed it. But no bird. Perhaps it hit the window while pancaked out, distributing the forces across its entire body, saving it. Too often (maybe once a week) we hear bird strikes, and perhaps one in ten of these is fatal. In other cases the bird is knocked out, revives, and eventually flies away, or it’s just a glancing hit. Rarely does a bird this big hit the windows.