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Luv it Thorny - P2

Looks like our very own "Angry Birds" are getting on with sorting the drone wars P2.


Ultimate angry birds: wedge-tailed eagles become drone predators


Wedge-tailed eagles have no interest in yielding their apex-predator status to flying drones.

MIKE CHERNEY
The Wall Street Journal
12:00AM October 2, 2017

Daniel Parfitt thought he’d found the perfect drone for a two-day mapping job in a remote patch of the outback. The roughly $US80,000 ($102,000) machine had a wingspan of 2m and resembled a stealth bomber.

There was just one problem. His machine raised the hackles of one prominent local resident: a wedge-tailed eagle.

The swooping eagle used its talons to punch a hole in the carbon fibre and Kevlar fuselage of Parfitt’s drone, which lost control and plummeted to the ground.

“I had 15 minutes to go on my last flight on my last day, and one of these wedge-tailed eagles just dive-bombed the drone and punched it out of the sky,” says Parfitt, who believed the drone was too big for a bird to damage.
“It ended up being a pile of splinters.”

Weighing more than 4kg with a wingspan that can approach 2.4m, the wedge-tailed eagle is Australia’s largest bird of prey. Once vilified for killing sheep and targeted by bounty hunters, it is now legally protected. Though a subspecies is still endangered in Tasmania, it is again dominating the skies across much of the continent.


The remains of Daniel Parfitt’s drone after an attack by a wedge-tailed eagle. Picture: Tom Law.

These highly territorial raptors 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.

Birds all over the world have attacked drones, but the wedge-tailed eagle is particularly eager to engage in dogfights, operators say. Some try to evade these avian enemies by sending their drones into loops or steep climbs, or just mashing the throttle to outrun them.

A long-term solution remains up in the air. 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.

They are the “ultimate angry birds”, says James Rennie, who started a drone-mapping and inspection business in Melbourne called Australian UAV. He figures that 20 per cent of drone flights in rural areas get attacked by the ­eagles. On one occasion, he was forced to evade nine birds all gunning for his machine.

The birds are considered bigger bullies than their more docile relatives, such as the bald and golden eagles in the US. Wedge-tailed eagles are the undisputed alpha birds in parts of Australia’s interior but it’s not entirely clear why they’re unusually aggressive towards drones. Scientists say they go after drones probably because they view them as potential prey or a competitor.

“They’re really the kings of the air in Australia,” says Todd Katzner, a biologist and eagle expert at the US Geological Survey in Boise, Idaho. “There’s nothing out there that can compete with them.”

The problem is growing more acute as Australia makes a push to become a hot spot for drones. Queensland recently hosted the World of Drones Congress and last year gave about $US780,000 to Boeing for drone testing. Amazon.com is expanding in Australia and could try using drones for deliveries, and the machines are increasingly favoured by big landowners such as miners and cattle ranchers.

The eagles will often attack in male-female pairs, and they aren’t always deterred if their first foray fails. Sometimes they will come from behind, attack in tandem from above, or even stagger their assault.

A drone operator may evade one diving eagle with an upward climb, but the second eagle can then snatch it, Rennie says.

“If you take your eye off that aircraft even for a couple of minutes, the likelihood is it will end up in pieces on the ground,” he says.

In late 2015, Andrew Chapman, a co-owner at Australian UAV, was mapping a ­quarry and landfill site near Melbourne, and figured it was close enough to the city that an eagle attack was unlikely.

But when the drone was about 800m away, an eagle “materialised out of thin air and knocked out the drone”, Chapman says.

He spent two days looking for the machine, worth about $US35,000 at today’s retail price, and had to ship it to the manufacturer in Switzerland for repairs.

More exotic defences have been considered. Chapman says arming drones with pepper spray was discussed but quickly discarded, out of concern it could harm the birds.

“It’s a relief to be planning for jobs overseas because we know the wedgies aren’t there,” says Chapman.


A wedge-tailed eagle as pictured by an Australian drone.

Rick Steven, a survey superintendent at the St Ives goldmine in Western Australia, who uses drones to survey the pits, debated using something like a ShuRoo — a device mounted on cars that makes noise, which humans can’t hear, to keep kangaroos off the road. But he was concerned it would be cumbersome on the drone and may not ward off eagles anyway.

Instead, Steven and other drone operators make use of another weapon: time.
The eagles are less active in the early morning, because the thermals — columns of rising air — they use to fly don’t develop until later in the day after the sun has warmed the ground.

In his first 2½ years flying drones at the mine, Steven says he lost 12 drones to eagle attacks, which cost his employer, South Africa-based Gold Fields, about $US210,000. During the past year, when he focused his flying in the morning, he has lost two — with two more close calls.

Any successes at deterring wedge-tailed eagle attacks in Australia could provide clues in how to minimise avian obstacles in other regions.

“Every time I go to a conference on birds and they’re having a workshop on drones, somebody tells me about this problem in Australia, about these wedge-tailed eagles,” says David Bird, a retired wildlife biology professor in Canada and founding editor of the Journal of Unmanned Vehicle Systems.

Parfitt, who began his drone business Aerial Image Works about three years ago, remains vigilant. Each of his last three jobs attracted an eagle attack.

Other birds will “fly at the drone and they’ll act in a very aggressive manner, but they don’t actually touch you,” he says.

“I’m not scared of anything else attacking my drone except the wedge-tailed eagle.”

The Wall Street Journal.

"K" - edit - Aye; mine is called Haast and she has made the Purdy redundant. Haast 4 – Purdy 0. Not the easiest of animals, but we seem to have come to an understanding – of sorts; the ‘mess’ is appalling, but it saves on shells – Big (huge) smile. Yuk, yuk ,yak…..

Some of the comments are worthy of regurgitation...

brett3 DAYS AGO



If Amazon starts flying drones over my suburban house at low level then I will have no choice but to acquire a shotgun - or perhaps a house trained wedge tail eagle.

While great for some applications drones can be spectacularly invasive.

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Adrian3 DAYS AGO


Problem is the Amazon drones will carry GPS and a camera with a continuous live feed. They will know who shot it down - next thing the police arrest you and a court case. Amazon will make sure the Govt is on their side. Oh but the satisfaction of shooting one of those things out of the air - raining little bits of plastic.

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Ken3 DAYS AGO


Glorious, amazing birds. 

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Greg3 DAYS AGO



@Ken Yep amazing.But perhaps their is a scientific explanation - the low level sound of the buzzing of a Drone may affect the Hearing and therefore balance of the Bird.

The Magnificent Eagles are doing the other Birds a huge favor.

Deplorable #1

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MA3 DAYS AGO


I am on the beach every morning photographing the sunrise. The serenity is amazing... right up until the moment someone with a drone turns up. I can understand birds wanting to attack them.

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Robyn3 DAYS AGO



@MA Drones are not going to go away soon. Have you seen the "accessories" now available for sale? A whole new industry.
Robyn S.

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John3 DAYS AGO


Here we go ADF...start training them up. They will be selected on a quota system though. At least four out of the 10 wedgies will have to be females and a minimum of two will have to be gender neutral.

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Patricia3 DAYS AGO



The facts of the matter are these:

1. Drone propellor tips move at very, very high speeds.
2. These propellors have already resulted in serious injuries to humans - and to birds.
3. A magpie recently lost a leg in an altercation with a drone.
4. There is no way for WTE's to learn to discriminate which bit of the drones to hit and which bits to avoid.
5. Even quite small injuries to legs, feet and toes can seriously reduce an individual bird's chance of thriving, let alone surviving.
6. Treating eagles v drones as in some way heroic or romantic is grossly to miss the point.

What is needed urgently is a set of laws to protect planes, raptores, stray humans and our privacy from drones.

Next in something of an update to the DW1 Senate Inquiry and CASA RPAS review, the following is from today's the Oz...

CASA mulls geofencing system
US Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters

• Annabel Hepworth
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM October 5, 2017
  

Australia’s aviation safety watchdog has had early-stage talks with Chinese drone manufacturer DJI about rolling out its geofencing system here.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has had preliminary dialogue with DJI about applying its “geo system” in Australia and has also had talks with air traffic control operator Airservices Australia about what data would be needed to make it work. More talks are expected this month, CASA said in a recent answer to a question on notice from a Senate inquiry into drones.

The development comes as pressure builds for the use of geofencing technologies designed to stop drones from entering restricted airspace as CASA takes submissions on drone safety rules and a Senate inquiry is expected to report in December.

Last week, a drone collided with one of the US Army’s UH-60M Black Hawks that was flying over a residential area at Staten Island, causing minor damage to a rotor blade and window. Meanwhile, a summit of the International Civil Aviation Organisation last week also dis­cussed setting up possible global standards for drones.

The Australian Airline Pilots’ Association has also entered the fray, declaring that geofencing is a “vital collision risk mitigator” for remotely piloted aircraft.

“It is imperative that Australia develop and move forward with an unmanned traffic management system which defends critical infrastructure from aerial incursions by the use of geofencing type technologies,” AusALPA says in a new submission to CASA.

The pilots’ group says it’s not clear that geofencing is well enough developed to be mandated yet but this should be done in the “not too distant future” to provide “greater incentive for manufacturers and developers to invest appropriately to protect their markets”.

It also raises concerns about the potential for geofencing curbs to be unlocked.

“AusALPA recognises that the geo-fenced ‘bubbles’ of airspace are akin to restricted rather than prohibited airspace and that there are legitimate reasons for RPAs operators to access that airspace from time to time,” the submission says.

“Establishing a practical and effective scheme that permits only authorised unlocking seems to us to be a matter to be primarily negotiated between regulators and developers.”

CASA’s manager of remotely piloted aircraft systems, Luke Gumley, told the Senate inquiry last month that while manufacturers like DJI had “quite advanced geofencing”, “it comes down to the user and whether they elect to use that particular application.”

“So, I’d imagine most people would use it, because that’s what comes out of the box; however, you’re not obliged to use it,” Mr Gumley said.

Brisbane Airport general manager of operations, the Australian Airport Association’s immediate past chairman, Stephen Goodwin, told the same hearing that it was investigating a few options.

“There is some geofencing technology that an airport operator can put in place which can possibly jam the frequencies on these types of things … We’re investigating possibly investing in something like that.”

MTF...P2