Phil the pheasant is grilled
A poor pheasant cheated death after smashing into a car at high speed.
Somehow the bird - nicknamed Phil - was sucked through a tiny grill only three inches wide.
Twenty minutes later he was discovered cowering next to the radiator fan and entirely unharmed at Prestwick Airport.
And stunned driver Nicole Cran said: “I just cannot understand how he survived. “He must be the luckiest bird alive.” Nicole and pal Nina Sajdak had been taking their toddler sons to watch the planes at the airport.
They’d earlier driven from Craigie to Galston to get the kids to sleep when the big cock bird hit the Citroen 4 Picasso in a 50mph impact.
Ayr student Nicole, 23, said: “It happened on a country road near Craigie and I was devasated to have killed something.
“I have been driving two years and this was the first thing I hit, I felt so sorry for the bird.
“We got back onto the A77 and when we got to the car park at Prestwick Airport a man knocked on my window and said did I realise I had a big pheasant in my car.
“I was expecting to see a dead bird, but he was alive.
“I could not even put my fist through the gap in the grille, so I don’t understand how he made it unharmed.”
The ring- necked game bird can weigh up to six pounds.
Nicole, studying psychology at UWS in Ayr, immediately drove to a garage behind the airport.
Baffled mechanics spent an hour getting Phil out and had to cut the grille.
He was then released at woodland further down the road.
Nicole added: “A couple of feathers were missing from its wing and that was it.
“He seemed to be chilling and enjoying the free ride.
“When he was released Phil certainly seemed eager to fly off again.”