Officials in Michigan said a bald eagle launched an airborne assault on a government drone that was conducting an operation around Lake Michigan and the skirmish didn’t end so well.
The operator of the drone, environmental quality analyst and drone pilot Hunter King, was mapping shorelines of the lake for erosion on July 21 when the eagle attacked the drone that is owned by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), according to a statement made public on Thursday.
The eagle ripped one of the drone’s propellers from 162 feet above the water and sent the $950 Phantom 4 Pro Advanced aircraft plummeting to the bottom of the lake.
King was on his fourth day of mapping shorelines in the Great Lakes area and had completed about seven minutes that round when the satellite reception got spotty, according to the agency. So he pressed the “Go Home” button to recall the drone.
As the drone was flying back to King, he was watching the aircraft’s video operating screen when he suddenly noticed the drone “twirling furiously,” and its speed dropping from 22 mph to 10 mph. King described the incident as “a really bad rollercoaster ride.”
When he looked up, the drone was gone and he saw an eagle flying away. A couple told the environmental analyst they saw an eagle strike something, but told King they were surprised to learn it was a drone.
Both King and the couple said the eagle appeared uninjured as it was fleeing the scene. Officials said that territorial issues might have been a reason for the attack.
“The attack could have been a territorial squabble with the electronic foe, or just a hungry eagle. Or maybe it did not like its name being misspelled (EGLE),” the agency said in a joking manner.
Shoreline-mapping EGLE #drone sent to watery Lake Michigan grave by U.P. bald eagle: https://t.co/cpt7Gx8kkG #MiEnvironment pic.twitter.com/3KoTzNFyYx
— Michigan EGLE (@MichiganEGLE) August 13, 2020
King and the couple searched the area for the drone but the results ended up fruitless after hours of scouring the shoreline.
The mission to retrieve the drone continued several days later after Arthur Ostaszewski, a coordinator with EGLE came equipped with a kayak and snorkeling gear. But he also returned empty-handed after “shuffling his feet for two hours in soft muck” in water with “near-zero visibility.”
According to a study from the Federal Aviation Administration, collisions between birds and drones are a relatively common occurrence.
The eagle population has also rebounded in the state. A survey conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2019 showed 849 active nesting sites in Michigan, up from a low point of 76 in the 1970s, the agency said.
