Nov. 11--Two airliners were forced to make emergency landings at Bradley International Airport recently after hitting some birds on takeoff, but the problem of bird strikes in aviation didn't start with the jet age.

It began a century ago with Orville Wright.

It was September 1905, two years after the Wright Brothers first achieved powered flight at Kitty Hawk. Orville was cruising over a cornfield near the family home in Dayton, Ohio, when he reported hitting a bird, said Richard Dolbeer, a federal official who heads a bird strike advisory committee for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Wright was doing circles, chasing the birds, and whacked one, according to his diary. It landed dead on the upper wing.

"It was probably a blackbird," Dolbeer said. "So birds have been interacting with aircraft since the beginning."

These days, however, there are thousands of aircraft in the skies and less open space for birds on the ground. Last year, there were 6,360 reported aircraft-vs.-bird incidents, Dolbeer said.

Almost always, the bird or flock of birds is the loser, although on rare occasions bird strikes have caused catastrophic crashes.

For instance, in 1995, an Air Force AWACS plane taking off from a base in Alaska flew into about 36 geese, some of which jammed both of its engines. The plane crashed about a mile from the runway, killing 24.