Hi Carl,
I have flown an electric remote controlled helicopter near terns and waders and
they watch it with the same kind of look they give a distant raptor - ie head
cocked slightly to the side. When flown up beside a kestrel, its flight
distance was about 5 m - that is, the kestrel hardly seemd concerned, and
common passerines that sit on wires like peewees don't seem to care about being
overflown by it.
I think RC helicopters would be the best way of getting very accurate counts of
shorebirds. You wouldn't need to get above them, and disturbance would be much
less than approaching a mob of birds from a distance. I have not yet used our
machine "in anger" for large shorebird counts, but I wish I had it in a
previous life doing counts for an airport. The counts would have been
significantly more accurate.
I very much doubt a raptor or any other bird would accidentally run into it,
though I have had woodswallows get quite close (2-3 m) in an obvious
attacking-type behaviour similar to what they might do with a raptor. Their
calls were woodswallow alarm calls, but they never connected, suggesting to me
that they don't find the helicopter as threatening as a goshawk, corvid, falcon
etc, or perhaps they could clearly see the turning blades and just wanted to
avoid something so unfamiliar. The machine I use would probably seriously
injure or kill a small bird, but you can put your hand into its rotors and
usually get nothing more than a "papercut". The machine I use is electric, so
noise is pretty much limited to rotor noise.
More powerful machines, especially those with combustion engines, could cause a
lot more damage in the case of rotor strikes, and are obviously much noisier.
Cheers,
Eric Vanderduys
Technical Officer
CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences
Phone: +61 7 4753 8529 | Fax: +61 7 4753 8600 | Mobile: 0437 330 961
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-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Chris Sanderson
Sent: Tuesday, 16 October 2012 11:37 AM
To: Carl Clifford
Cc: Birding Aus
Subject: Drones & birding
Hi Carl,
No direct experience, but I know from disturbance monitoring for shorebirds
that I've done in the past that shorebirds hate helicopters. Pretty sure even
a "toy" one woud cause large amounts of disturbance. Also I've been told that
bird strikes on remote control aircraft can be fatal to birds like eagles, so
it's possibly also dangerous for the birds. These are gut reactions though,
not based on any actual observations of this tech in use.
Cheers,
Chris
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Carl Clifford <>wrote:
> Dear B-A,
>
> Has anyone on the list had any experience using camera equipped
> quadricopter style drones for birding? They seem to have the potential
> to be a useful tool for observing waders and the like.
>
> I would be interested in hearing of anyones experiences.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Clifford
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