“It was like a really bad rollercoaster ride,” said the drone pilot.
Data from the flight records showed the eagle strike occurred 162 feet above the water.
The lost drone will be replaced with a newer model.
In the wild, any day could be your last.
A shoreline-mapping EGLE drone learned this lesson the hard way when a bald eagle attack tore off a propeller and sent it plummeting to its death in the depths of Lake Michigan — never to be seen again.
Police in The Netherlands were the first to come up with the idea of using raptors to intercept drones, inducting bald eagles into the service in late 2015. The French army followed suit last year, but it opted for the golden eagle — a natural-born killer with a hooked beak, amber eyes and a wingspan of up to 2.2 metres (seven feet).
