Agronomist and farmer Leigh Nairn is at the cutting edge of using drones to help his farming operation, but didn’t expect to be at the cutting edge of the battle between nature and man.
While using a drone to zoom in on a crop preparation on his family property “Terara”, at Binnu, north of Geraldton in Western Australia, Mr Nairn suddenly saw a wedge-tailed eagle zoom in on his drone.
He’d just stopped the video, but the drone kept taking pictures as the eagle made eye contact with the drone. The eagle put quick pay to the eye in the sky, and sent the $1700 piece of technology plummeting to the ground.
“My first fear was that the tractor driver would not see it and run over the drone,” Mr Nairn said, who was operating the drone from about 400m away. “I certainly hadn’t seen anything like this before. I’ve had cockatoos and galahs flying around a drone but they just look and fly away. This eagle obviously saw it was a threat.”
The drone plummeted to earth and was ruined. Mr Nairn said he was happy to report the eagle, he believed to be a female, was not hurt. The propellers of the lightweight drone are made of plastic and posed no danger to the eagle.
Mr Nairn, who is also a Landmark agronomist at Northhampton, says drones are proving a valuable aid on his family farm and believed they will become more helpful as time moves on. He also used a drone to monitor lambing on “Terara”. “I have to fly it at about 80m so the ewes are not disturbed,” he said.
“Drones are awesome. I can use them to see how the crop is emerging and monitor how tractors are going with coverage. What happened that day was very surprising. The eagle took the drone out straight away.”
John Ellicott
journalist and author
journalist and author
