Bold Eagles: Angry Birds Are Ripping $80,000 Drones Out of the Sky (cetusnews.com) 279
schwit1 found this story in the Wall Street Journal:
Daniel Parfitt thought he'd found the perfect drone for a two-day mapping job in a remote patch of the Australian Outback. The roughly $80,000 machine had a wingspan of 7 feet and resembled a stealth bomber. There was just one problem. His machine raised the hackles of one prominent local resident: a wedge-tailed eagle. Swooping down from above, the eagle used its talons to punch a hole in the carbon fiber and Kevlar fuselage of Mr. Parfitt's drone, which lost control and plummeted to the ground... "It ended up being a pile of splinters"...
These highly territorial raptors, which eat kangaroos, have no interest in yielding their apex-predator status to the increasing number of drones flying around the bush. They've even been known to harass the occasional human in a hang glider... Camouflage techniques, like putting fake eyes on the drones, don't appear to be fully effective, and some pilots have even considered arming drones with pepper spray or noise devices to ward off eagles.
One mining survey superintendent said he's now lost 12 different drones to eagle attacks, costing his employer $210,000. Another drone was actually attacked by nine different eagles, and its pilot estimates eagles are now attacking 20% of all drone flights in rural Australia.
These highly territorial raptors, which eat kangaroos, have no interest in yielding their apex-predator status to the increasing number of drones flying around the bush. They've even been known to harass the occasional human in a hang glider... Camouflage techniques, like putting fake eyes on the drones, don't appear to be fully effective, and some pilots have even considered arming drones with pepper spray or noise devices to ward off eagles.
One mining survey superintendent said he's now lost 12 different drones to eagle attacks, costing his employer $210,000. Another drone was actually attacked by nine different eagles, and its pilot estimates eagles are now attacking 20% of all drone flights in rural Australia.
Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nature has decided. No, you can't fucking pepper spray an eagle. Give it up.
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:5, Informative)
I hope the eagles knock each and every one of these machines out of the sky. I hope it ends up costing these companies millions, and there's not a fucking thing they're going to be able to do about it. Drone operators/owners are some of the most selfish, self-entitled assholes around, and every time one of them loses one of their drones, I cheer. Good riddance.
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Anybody got a good recipe for eagle?
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:4, Interesting)
After the double bird strike put Sully in the east river, a shocking number of birds were killed in response.
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:5, Informative)
Best of all, these eagles are listed as endangered and are protected by Australian law. In fact IIRC, the sections of the law that pertain to endangered species impose a "strict liability" standard on actions that injure a member of that species. That means you don't even have to intend to inure one of these eagles. Just being careless can get you serious prison time.
So pretty much those drone operators have to suck it up.
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Bald eagles have gotten so numerous and are so aggressive that they are considering taking it off the protected list in the USA. Homer, Alaska is over run with them.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story... [go.com]
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The key word is "protected". Injuring or killing protected specieis is what gets you in for a bad time with an angry judge, regardless of whether its endangered, or not. Although its largely an academic distinction. Most non endangered protected species are only a bad summer away from endangered anyway.
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You sound like a car enthusiast describing cyclists.
Did a drone pilot kill your favourite pet, or do you feel the same way about all operators of remote-controlled equipment?
Re: you are dumb (Score:2, Funny)
They're not professionals, they can't even out fly an eagle.
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Are you really Glad these people are suffering setbacks because of some unforeseen consequences?
Yes I am. Stop fucking with the eagles since they clearly don’t like drones in their territory.
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Wedge tails beg to differ.
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Yep. I remember once installing a video conferencing system worth all up close to a quarter of a million dollars in the early 2000s. I asked the CEO "How do you guys financially justify spending all this money?" to which he replied "kid we got more money than we know what to do with, this is nothing", and he was right, the mining company in particular had ridiculous amounts of capital just lying around in b
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:5, Interesting)
Would pepper spray even work on an eagle? Birds can't taste capsaicin; if anything, it's numbing to them.
It's interesting to see how territorial these birds are. You can find lots of videos on Youtube of them doing things like attacking ultralights [youtube.com] and such. I think they're simply going to have to "eagleproof" their drones. Which unfortunately will make them need to be bigger (and more expensive) for a given-sized payload, since a greater chunk of the mass fraction will need to go into structure.
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:5, Funny)
I think they're simply going to have to "eagleproof" their drones. Which unfortunately will make them need to be bigger (and more expensive) for a given-sized payload, since a greater chunk of the mass fraction will need to go into structure.
Or they could just make drones that don't look like pigs - then the angry birds would stop attacking.
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Oh god! Too bad you can only get five points!!! Had I been drinking something...
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Nature has decided. No, you can't fucking pepper spray an eagle. Give it up.
Nah but you could probably rig up a sweet net launcher.
Re: Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:2)
Not with that attitude
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Nature has decided. No, you can't fucking pepper spray an eagle. Give it up.
You could use this......a machine gun armed quad-rotor drone. Problem solved... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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If we could only teach them to recognize spy drones and target them primarily and frequently....
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My chickens eat habanero peppers like my grand kids eat chocolate candy. If you hit them in the eye it might bother them, otherwise I think nothing.
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I'm dismayed you'd think it necessary to use projectile weapons. When instead you could use nitinol rotors with retractable guards. Yes, it blends!
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This is apparently _not_ a quad copter, it's a bunch of fixed wing drones.
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I'm most dreadfully embarrassed.
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing a 10 gauge goose gun can't fix.
It's a protected species. Hope you like spending time in jail.
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The birds are more important to most people than your drone is. To the majority of people, there is no problem.
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Yeah, it's a good thing that Australia isn't full of livestock ranches that are thousands of square kilometers.
Oh wait, it is. And I bet those people will stop caring about eagles if the price of their beef goes up.
People like ranchers and miners use drones to survey large areas of land. They can map their property in a couple days and locate every herd. I guess one solution is to get rid of the big open ranches and just cram all the animals into warehouses, that would be better right? That way everyon
Re:Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:5, Interesting)
Go shooting protected birds in Australia, and you'll be lucky if the cops get you before the locals do. Most australians consider poaching somewhere between pedophilia and keeping dead hookers in the basement. When I worked at the department of parks, we'd have to think very hard over what info we'd release on animal abuse prosecutions, becuase people would react so angily that vigilantism was a real possibility.
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Except that Wedge-tailed eagles are protected.
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Actually, that's exactly what I'd be saying about these cheap drones that can't survive a bird-strike.
MQ-1's don't get taken down by eagles.
Haha, I don't think they would, right. But now you've gone from an $80,000 drone to a $4 million drone. You can buy 50 of the cheaper ones for that price. And I imagine that the piloting hardware and operating costs for a Predator are just a bit higher than for the professional photography drones. Not to mention anything about the grand facilities, you can't exactly get in your pickup truck, drive out to wherever you're needed, and launch a Predator.
Re: Good. Stop flying drones. (Score:2, Informative)
more power to Mother Nature.
drone ops...tossers and wankers.
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Still, as an aside; that is one gorgeous bird.
Nature bats last (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm. . . Angry Birds. . . (Score:2)
. . ..seems like there could be a video game in that. . . .. . .Oh. Nevermind. . . (grin)
Eagles are top of the food chain predators (Score:5, Insightful)
and they know it. They are defending their position as the master of the sky, deadliest flying living creature.
They are smart and cunning and strong. They use their ability to fly high to develop a ton of momentum and tear apart their prey.
Pretty hard to defend against them, they won't back down.
Eagles may soar... (Score:2)
Re:Eagles are top of the food chain predators (Score:5, Interesting)
I like to watch them hunt and fight. They're magnificent when they hunt, circling up really high, you can see the feathers off the tip of their wings like fingers feeling the air and when they see their moment they pull their wings in close and fall from the sky like they are pulling every bit of speed they can out of their momentum. I can't really express what it looks like in words adequately and video doesn't really convey the amount of height they strike from or how quickly they descend. You can see how and why jet fighters are designed they way they are.
They also have a sense of humour. I saw a tree full of parrots all squawking and carrying on, they generally leave the tree all at once in one direction as a group. Well, this eagle wasn't having any of that and flew up to this tree and you could almost hear the parrots squawking HOLY SHIT ITS AN EAGLE and scatter, to which the eagle just kind of tilted and kept going, just reminding them.
They get harassed by magpies, crows and other birds, to which they barely respond, just a beat or two of their wings that the other birds cannot match in power.
Once, I saw two of them fighting, way up in the sky. They locked talons and fell, tumbling and rolling over each other closer and closer to the ground. I think the loser is the one breaking from the other first.
Anyway, they are the wedge tailed eagle moments that stick out in my mind that I could share. I saw one up close on the ground once and was a little surprised at just how big it was, the talons, the beak, standing just over a metre high and as I looked into those calm, unconcerned avian eyes I realised it wasn't threatened by me at all, so I'm not surprised they smash drones.
Re: Eagles are top of the food chain predators (Score:3)
Apparantly you don't know how eagles mate, that wasn't fighting, that was dating.
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Apparantly you don't know how eagles mate, that wasn't fighting, that was dating.
I'm not sure whether to feel embarrassed or privileged for watching two eagles getting nasty, thanks for letting me know.
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Don't worry about it, it's a quite fascinating thing they do. They weren't fucking, they were just doing the courting thing that all birds do (dancing, calling etc), eagles grab each other by the talons and plumet and let go at the last second, climb back up and do it again and again. When the female is satisfied then they get busy and do the whole parenting thing. It's actually the coolest courting in the animal kingdom IMO.
Re:Eagles are top of the food chain predators (Score:5, Informative)
What you're describing is cartwheeling. It's a show of trust between them, and is an integral part of courtship.
Re: Eagles are top of the food chain predators (Score:2)
No, WE are The Apex Predators.
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No. The biggest one probably has ants, cockroaches, or termites at the top. I *think* the bacteria are too fragmented to have a competitor. And I'm judging the size of the food chain by the mass of it's components.
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That's almost poetic. You came close to iambic pentameter.
deadly (Score:3, Interesting)
Do we need further reminders that everything in Australia wants to kill you?
Maybe don't fly there? (Score:2)
Seems like you probably shouldn't fly expensive droves in those areas.
I don't get this (Score:3)
Aren't birds immune to pepper spray? Wouldn't simply being a drone add a lot of defense? I'd think rotors would break bird bones like twigs or at least hurt really bad.
Re:I don't get this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't get this (Score:5, Informative)
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Are their eyes also immune?
I would doubt it.
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If a drone operator accidentally injured or killed a wedgie, there is potential jail time involved. They're heavily protected, with only about 200 pairs left.
"They attacked my $80k flying camera" wouldn't be a good excuse, they're a known threat to drone operators and it would be negligent to allow the drone to injure them. Shooting/zapping at, reinforcing the drone to the point where it poses a danger to the eagle or switching from a fixed-wing to a multirotor drone without adequate protection - for the ea
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Sorry - quick update - Wedgetails are protected, but it's a particular subspecies in Tassie which only has ~200 pairs left. Misread the wikipedia article.
That was a case of bad mission planning (Score:5, Funny)
The machine ... resembled a stealth bomber.
Tragically, though flying in broad daylight, it was not escorted by a protective formation of fighter drones, making it an easy pick for the latest Talon strike fighters of the austral Aquiline air force.
It's not nice (Score:5, Funny)
to fool Mother Nature.
Hands up if you're old enough to remember that TV commercial!
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Hands up if you're old enough to remember that TV commercial!
Sorry, I was holding my hand up but the bursitis made me bring it back down before you saw it.
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Mother (Nature), please, I'd rather do it myself.
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plenty of NRA people are pro-environment.
By the way, which is more harmful to the environment, the person getting their meat from supermarket or the card holding NRA guy who gets his meat hunting?
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My self-defense raptor is sitting on my copy of Padlocks Monthly.
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Never thought that birds could be more effective than shotguns...
Your move, NRA card-holding privacy conscious anti-environmentalists.
Your move...
As a NRA card-holding privacy conscious environmentalists, I'm rooting for the eagles.
Eagles sometimes attack Gliders (Score:2)
Full size gliders. Normally the eagles are friendly enough, and can mark thermals. But sometimes they attack, ignoring the size difference. The go for the leading edge of the wing which would kill another bird. But it is the strongest part of the glider and the Eagles come off second best.
The eagles generally let you know when they are not happy, first making aggressive movements. Maybe the drones need some wide angle cameras to see them.
I personally have not been attacked by an eagle, but have been by
Apex-predator status? (Score:2)
Not when you have crows in the neighborhood. They frequently mob bald eagles and chase them off. The solution might be to develop a self-organizing swarm of smaller drones that surround and defend the parent (the one carrying the camera).
Re:Apex-predator status? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about Australian Wedge-Tailed Eagles, not the American bald eagle (which is basically a glorified seagull [popsci.com.au]).
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Um, you mean a glorified sea eagle?
Gulls aren't even in the same order, let alone family.
Well done (Score:2)
Typical Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
All the wildlife there is out to kill you.
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I keep having to remind myself maybe there's a reason it was used to send prisoners to...
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Because the English thought sending you to a Canada was too cruel, probably because our winters scared the shit out of them.
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You haven't heard the Brits' opinion of our summers.
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Because the American colonies had rebelled & were no longer accepting England's detritus?
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Explain koalas.
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All the wildlife there is out to kill you.
I especially like the bit where they tried painting eyes on the drone. Reminds me of this radio talks show host:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
For those unable to see the link allow me to quote:
"Ahhhhhhh the eyes don't work the eyes don't work, ahhhhhh, get it off, the eyes don't work. Get mum get mum get mum ahhhhhhh."
Some basic rules: (Score:2)
Fly faster than eagles.
Or at night.
Don't piss off sky predators.
You're going to need a bigger drone. (Score:4, Funny)
You're going to need a bigger drone.
Effective Countermeasure (Score:2)
One countermeasure to bird attacks is to demonstrate superior flight capability. Of course this requires pre-emptive training of the raptors. A drone can out climb any bird and demonstrating this ability will often serve to prevent aggressive behavior. This is certainly not a cure all but one element of an effective strategy that includes maintaining appropriate situational awareness of one's flight environment of which these birds are a part.
Problem solved. (Score:3, Interesting)
Idiots Fly Drones Too Close To Wild Animals (Score:3)
... should be the headline.
It's kinda like when a bull kills a matador, all I can think is "Fuck Yeah!"
The human response (Score:3)
There's a species that meddles with what we want to do? Why is it allowed to continue existing? Remove it from the ecosystem.
Ever consider why they're mapping? (Score:3, Informative)
Li-Po batteries and sharp talons don't mix. (Score:3)
Eagles and flying machines (Score:2)
Think of it as evolution in action (Score:2)
This applies not just to people, but to their machines and to any given person-machine combination.
Finally! (Score:2)
An Angry Birds article worth reading.
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Well to be fair and adhere to the law, should it continue, than legislation would be forced to ensure the safety of drones ie their blades would need to be shrouded to protect the birds when they choose to attack. As to putting on stuff to attack the birds, well, get caught and face a high risk of a short custodial sentences, something in the months. Replace plastic blades with steel ones and likely that sentence would blow out to years. As long as the birds attack drones and not people, basically, suck it
Re:Uh huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then map the area in a way that doesn’t fuck with the wildlife. Otherwise, boo-fucking-hoo that the pissed off eagles are downing your drones. These people deserve nothing but crocodile tears.
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The question is then what they did before they had drones, which cost even more than a cool $80,000?
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Light aircraft flying back and forth.
Noisy, polluting and expensive.
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Or helicopters. Also noisy, polluting, and expensive.
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Light aircraft flying back and forth.
Noisy, polluting and expensive.
I'm not so sure about the "expensive" part. The wet rate for a small airplane is in the $100-$170 per hour range. Compared to what the drones cost, and how short they seem to last, I don't think cost saving could be the reason here.
Being able to hover and descend below safe flight levels to get better pictures might be a factor.
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Eagles are friggin' powerhouses. I have seen several videos shot from a drone getting 'killed' by one, and the eagles don't look like they get injured at all at least in those. Mind, I doubt people would post videos where the eagle got a foot chopped off.
But let me ask you, even if pepper spray worked on birds (let's imagine a product that has the same effect), how safe do you think it would be for an eagle in flight to suddenly have severe pain in its eyes and an inability to see? That eagle would crash to
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Why are these so expensive anyway? I mean holy crap, at $80K you're approaching the cost of actual human-carrying aircraft. Isn't the whole point of drones to do this stuff on the cheap?
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I remember in the late 70s or early 80s there was a Cessna taken out by an Eagle. The pilot was able to land the plane and said that he saw nothing at all, just bang, blood and feathers. The windscreen exploded and the passenger was knocked unconscious IIRC. The pilot was quite badly injured but managed to land with some difficulty. There was an investigation as to why his mayday calls went unanswered. Amazingly enough the conclusion was that the microphone was made u/s by the massive amount of blood t
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You mean as some kind of payback? Let others feel what it's like if we fuck up their ecosystem by bringing in animals it's not prepared to handle?