[Seahawk]

All pilots live in fear of bird strikes (passengers should, as well!). I've been very fortunate to have had only two so far in nearly twenty years of flying.
The first was in San Diego, mid 80's...I was working the mountain helo pads north of Tecate, Mexico in an SH-60B, transitioning from a high hover to foward flight DOWN the mountain when a medium sized hawk flew low to high right in front of my grill and impacted the main rotor mast. We felt the shudder and made an emergency landing at Brown Field, about five miles away. Those were five mile long miles over very rough terrain. We landed and shut down...it became apparent that our relative lack of forward airspeed and the rotational forces of the rotor system prevented any real damage...in retrospect (and from terra firma) I felt bad for the hawk.
The second occurance was on night vision goggles...and I never even knew it happened! I was working with navy SEALS to develop tactics in the then new HH-60H. We were doing low level insertions and extractions at Fort AP Hill in Virginia, lots of fun stuff, both low and fast and nap of the earth. Great to be young and stupid.
After flying back to the squadron, taxing to the line and shutting down, my plane captain started his routine post flight inspection of the helo. Before I could pack all my pilot trash and get out of the aircraft, the plane captain jumped off the 60 and asked me if I noticed anything "unusual" about the aircrafts performance.
"Why, no", I answered.
"Come take a look, El Tee."
Uh oh.
What he showed me left me cold: On the INSIDE of the engine intake was a wide, long streak of blood and bird feathers...I'd obviously ingested a fowl of some reknowned.
I still bless the engineer who developed the Inlet Particle Separater (IPS) that allowed the GE T700-401C jet engine to have Thanksgiving dinner and still matriculate me down the field!
My co-pilot and me never knew...how cool is that.