I hit one on the way to work on Friday. On a narrow bit of road with the estate wall on one side and a verge on the other, the stupid creature decided to take off and try to fly away over the wall. There was oncoming traffic so apart from a bit of braking there wasn't a lot I could do. Impact was on the left headlight which is now wobbly and the main beam bulb has failed/throws a warning.

Grrr.

Day off tomorrow, I'll have to see what needs to be replaced. The glass in the headlight is fine, but I suspect the mountings are toast.

They can do an amazing amount of damage.

Be thankful it was only a pheasant and not Bambi... I still maintain though - deer and pheasants are equally as fecking stupid animals.

I've had a few pheasants over the years but mostly in company vehicles so they repaired the damage. It seems they will always take off in the direction they are facing, so if they are sitting on the verge facing the road, they are about to take off in front of you and not turn around and fly away from you. Hit one once when I was racing motorcross so had the bike on a trailer behind the car. Hit at the top of the windscreen, sheared the roof aerial off as it slid along the roof and ended up wrapped around the handlebars of the bike. Didn't find it until I arrived at the track.....

Could be a lot worse though. Many years ago a friend hit a bullock on a country road in the middle of the night. Took its legs out from under it so the body landed on the top of the windscreen. Fortunately, he was driving a rally replica Mitsubishi Colt complete with full roll cage or it would have crushed the passenger compartment. Wrote the car off but the bullock rolled off the car, got up and ran back to its field.

At the moment around here there seem to be a lot of dead badgers at the side of the road, they must do quite a bit of damage but at least it'll be low down.

Well, it looks like something is broken because the headlight now wobbles around a horizontal axis and the top isn't held out against the grill. Time to strip it down. I suspect I'll need to order some bits.... but first I need to fuel up the Jeep so I've got a means to get to work tomorrow.

You might be lucky and find its just popped a ball joint out of a socket, Last encounter I had with one of those stupid birds (on the A34 doing 70mph) did exactly that on another car, plus destoyed the nearside indicator lens. Didn't do much for the phesant if the feathers were anything to go by. Ended up driving round bits of the New forest in fading light with the headlight near the ground only really lighting up the bit of the ground you couldn't see out of the windscreen.

Thanks Brian, maybe it's just something simple.
I know this is the world's most boring thread, but simply popping out for fuel also became a saga because someone had a big crash on the A64 early this morning which closed the dual carriageway in both directions. It was still shut this afternoon which meant Malton effectively went back to its pre-bypass days and was pretty much solid all day :/
So 90 minutes later I've got a fully fueled jeep (minus 15 miles) and a Range Rover standing in the pitch dark. I have postponed!