A wedge-tailed eagle which posed a threat to a German schnauzer in my sister-in-law’s garden has returned with a vengeance – this time to disrupt the family’s plans to sell their home.
In June I wrote that the eagle had carried off a baby wallaby from the property overlooking the Tamar north of Launceston and then eyed the schnauzer which Judith Stanton was minding while its owner, her son and his family, took a holiday.
This time the swooping eagle was not looking for a quick meal. The raptor was more interested in an estate agent’s drone which was taking pictures of the home and grounds. The territorial eagle had long regarded the Stanton garden and the airspace above it as its own.
Birds and drones don’t mix, especially when the power of a wedge-tailed eagle – the fourth biggest eagle in the word – is involved. Either the drone gets smashed and crushed by the eagle’s talons, or the eagle itself sustains damage from the drone’s blades.
An email from the Stantons alerting me to the eagle’s antics prompted research into drone-raptor wars in both Australia and other parts of the world and I soon discovered that when it comes to drone attacks internationally, the Australian wedge–tailed eagle rules supreme.
This status was afforded to it by the Wall Street Journal no less, in an article highlighting the trouble that a business involved in surveying for mines in Western Australia had with eagles. The company had in fact bowed to eagle supremacy, and had instituted a policy of flying drones at times when eagles were less likely to be about. This was early morning before the thermals– exploited by eagles for effortless, gliding flight – had been created by the sun warming the ground
In other parts of the world, eagles have proven so good at bringing down flying objects that some military forces have even trained them to intercept and capture enemy drones. In the UK, eagles have been used to stop associates of prison inmates from using drones to carry drugs over prison walls. In France and the Netherlands, the police have trained eagles and other raptors to attack drones that may be involved in terrorist activities.
No doubt eagles working in the service of mankind are taught of the drones’ dangers to the raptors themselves. In the wild it is a different proposition. Wild raptors don’t have any experience with such aerial objects. The rotary blades of most recreational drones can injure or kill. And birds, particularly territorial birds, do not shy away when they feel under threat. Eagles, hawks, and even geese readily attack anyone and anything that approaches their nests.
In the case involving the Tamar Valley property there was a happy ending, or at least a stalemate. The eagle inspected the drone at close quarters, flying alongside it, and then decided this strange, humming creature did not pose a threat. The drone was left to do its photographic business, and the eagle went on its way.