When I was a student at VT-28 we had a T-34 take a buzzard through the windscreen. Luckily, the instructor (a LT) was getting his formation qualification and was flying with the CO in the back of the aircraft. If you are going to get knocked out by a bird, it's best to have a guy with several thousand hours in the aircraft with you. They did an emergency divert, and the LT woke up on final and started fighting the CO for the controls. They managed to get in on the ground without further damage.
It is amazing that there are not more bird strikes in Corpus than there are. It always seems like there is a group of buzzards at Waldron field, and there are always a million pellicans right off the departure end of the parallel. I had a near miss with about 30 of them when I was on my out on a cross country. There was a flock flying about 50 feet above my flight path, they got scared and dove right past me. I still don't know how we managed to miss all of them.
