Hawk 1, Drone 0: Bird of prey attacks quadcopter, takes down from skies (VIDEO)
An irate hawk reclaimed its patch of sky from an antagonistic drone this week in Cambridge, Massachusetts, knocking the buzzing recording device out of the sky as easily as its normal prey.
YouTube user and software developer Christopher Schmidt had been
flying the Phantom FC40 quadcopter drone around the city’s
Magazine Beach Park, when the giant bird of prey took exception
to his activities. In Schmidt’s words, the bird “wasn’t too
happy” with its presence.
The footage shows the predator skillfully swooping into the
camera before swiping at it with its enormous talons and knocking
it out of the sky.
“As soon as he flew at me, I throttled down the props to try
to minimize any harm to the bird,” Schmidt wrote alongside
his upload of the video on YouTube.
The drone then tumbles to the ground and rests upside down on the
park’s football pitch.
“As far as I could tell, the juvenile red-tailed hawk came out
unscathed, and having defeated his prey, was happy to
retreat,” Schmidt said.
This isn’t the first time that local wildlife has attacked
invasive drones. In June 2013, researchers at the University of
Maryland, funded by the US Army, faced a similar problem. The
lifelike Robo-Raven – the wings of which can flap independently
of each other – was also attacked by a hawk on one of its
flights.
Last December, YouTube user Buddhanz1 also filmed a scenario
where a whole flock of birds dive-bombed his DJI phantom drone.
