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Farmers using drones to monitor their farms may have a new challenge -- eagles.
A wedge-tailed eagle has attacked and badly damaged a drone flying over farm machinery in Western Australia.
Farmer Leigh Nairn, at Binnu, north of Geraldton, was using a drone to check the set-up of his airseeder when the eagle swooped, grabbed the drone with its talons and knocked it out of the sky.
“I had the drone doing a bit of scouting over a paddock, checking the airseeder to see how it was all going in, and then out of nowhere this big wedgie came in and attacked,” he said.
“It was probably all but one or two seconds. The next thing I saw was my drone tumbling to earth.”
The drone camera was damaged and a propeller was knocked off.
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