A fleet of drones patrolling New York City’s beaches for signs of sharks and struggling swimmers is drawing backlash from an aggressive group of seaside residents: local shorebirds.
Since the drones began flying in May, flocks of birds have repeatedly swarmed the devices, forcing the police department and other city agencies to adjust their flight plans. While the attacks have slowed, they have not stopped completely, fueling concern from wildlife experts about the impact on threatened species nesting along the coast.
Veronica Welsh, a wildlife coordinator at the Parks Department, said the birds were “very annoyed by the drones” from the moment they arrived on the beach.
I fly drones for work and seagulls in particular are always checking it out and being all aggressive around it. Fuckers can’t fly upwards nearly as fast as the drone though so it’s easy enough to leave them in the dust. They never actually make contact though but it’s still annoying.
wow you suck. drones are really terrible for birds. least you could do is have empathy, but nah.
Just to be clear, while I’m joking around here to make a funny, you’re 100% right and I do everything in my power to be as little intrusive as I can especially in actual natural areas. The birds I’m talking about here are city-rat-style seagulls, they’re not in any danger, in fact if you read the subtext of my original comment, you’ll notice I fly away from them immediately which is the correct thing to do for both them and the drone. Also I’m currently taking steps to move into new niches in my work so I don’t need to fly so often, because while I do love it I recognise it bothers people and wildlife and don’t really want to do it more than I absolutely need to.
hype
One stole my chips once
Us humans stole pretty much all their habitat.
I wanted that chip bad enough that I stomped on the bird.
Oh wow so cool and edgy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_bird_species_since_1500
It’s tragic. People get up in arms about tomato soup on famous paintings … this is even worse because every species taken out of the ecosystem is a lost node in a complex web that sustains us, lost species represent a loss of learning about the world we live in. There are so many interesting behaviors, chemical pathways, beautiful animals, who are going to be gone forever.
They should have thought about that before my chips
I don’t think he stomped on all of them…
Nah but this kind of dismissive attitude definitely leads to extinctions.
Lol
Fuck birds. They had their chance 65 million years ago.
Plus they keep pooping on my car.