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Drone killers

17 Nov 2016
@ 07:55 pm (GMT)

Rob Kennedy

For those of us who maybe just slightly paranoid about privacy and unwanted surveillance - a solution is at hand. Following a story on Dutch police training eagles to take down drones which might interfere with air ambulances during emergencies comes a story about a mining company in Western Australia losing 9 survey drones to Wedge Tailed Eagles. No training necessary as they just "do what comes natural". So, all we need is to live in an area where eagles gather or obtain and train one for yourself. Australian "Wedgies' nearly always operate in male/female pair mode as you can see in the story as the one which grabbed the drone took a photo of its mate coming in to attack.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-02/eagles-vs-drones-dutch-police-train-birds-to-take-down-uavs/7132096
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-17/wedge-tailed-eagles-bring-down-drones-in-goldfields/8033056

Replies

17 Nov 2016
@ 08:57 pm (GMT)

Quote this

Andrew Murray

Re: Drone killers

Absolutely stunning creatures. I met a guy that had one since the 60's. He saved it after being hit by a truck. He spent $5K getting it fixed up but it couldn't fly again, it would always crash and end up hurting itself again. So he keeps its wings clipped now and feeds it road kill. It's got a big pen out the front of his pub, somewhere near the NT/SA border but thoroughly in the NT.

He said that is dogs get too close to the fence, it pops its head through and will attack them, it's killed a few little dogs like foxies.

There are a few pairs around my area, I live close to mountains and you can often see them riding the thermals. I've spotted their nest once too.

When I used to skydive you'd hear stories of eagles attacking the canopies. Which is frightening as anything but bloody expensive too!

A friend was under canopy once, spotted an eagle and tried to pull up next to it. He said the eagle turned its head and looked him straight in the eye, he then pulled away and made his canopy dive as quickly as possible. He said that he'd even considered chopping it and using his reserve after clearing some distance.