Extremely close encounter with a bird!

phantomi · May 23, 2020

For people like these we will all be banned.

Vaideeshwar · May 23, 2020

phantomi said:
For people like these we will all be banned.

Not sure who you are referring to, but nobody is immune to the threat from birds. If it was the video of the drone almost getting hit by the flock of geese, he was flying over barren land, and even if the bird would have hit the drone, it wouldn't have created an incident.

The threat from birds is very real and always existent. Despite your best maintenance measures and experience, you can get knocked out of the sky by a diving falcon.

dlmvegas · May 23, 2020

I have a humming bird that seems to be attracted to my drone when I shoot it up in the air. It just sits in front of the drone while it's in the air. Must be the propeller sound that attracts them.

Vaideeshwar · May 23, 2020

dlmvegas said:
I have a humming bird that seems to be attracted to my drone when I shoot it up in the air. It just sits in front of the drone while it's in the air. Must be the propeller sound that attracts them.

I agree, not all birds want to hit the drone, some are just curious, some are threatened and the rest see it as prey.

As the OP, I have a mini update.
I flew in the same spot as the day when the bird started wilding circling the drone. As soon as I got off the air, there were flocks of different species of birds chirping and trying to scare the drone away. I reckon they have their nests in nearby trees. On the day of the incident, as @Simone L suggested, the bird that started circling my drone was definitely a bird of prey (I think a Harrier Hawk), which, I guess, was attracted to the scene by the buffet of small birds flying below it. As soon as the smaller birds (that were originally chasing the drone) sensed the predator, they flee, leaving the drone the only target in the sky for the Hawk to pursue.

Moral of the story: don't fly in an area densely populated by trees. If you have to, take it high up to 100m or more.

Vaideeshwar · May 23, 2020

dlmvegas said:
I have a humming bird that seems to be attracted to my drone when I shoot it up in the air. It just sits in front of the drone while it's in the air. Must be the propeller sound that attracts them.

Speaking of sitting.. I once gave a ladybug a free drone ride. I didn't realize the bug was sitting on the drone until I completed my flight. I took off from grass, so the bug must have boarded the drone when it had the time. I thought it was pretty funny when that happened! XD

GaryPHayes · May 23, 2020

Used to get bothered by birds a lot with my MP1 and Wedge Tail eagles would often circle my Phantom 4 Pro. Until I put some eyes and mouth on the top of the drone. This has worked really well and now zero close encounters in 2 years and 1200 km of travel on both of those. First thing I did with my MA2 is put eyes on the top ... this apparently makes the attacking birds think they have been spotted, silly things

Vaideeshwar · May 23, 2020

GaryPHayes said:
Used to get bothered by birds a lot with my MP1 and Wedge Tail eagles would often circle my Phantom 4 Pro. Until I put some eyes and mouth on the top of the drone. This has worked really well and now zero close encounters in 2 years and 1200 km of travel on both of those. First thing I did with my MA2 is put eyes on the top ... this apparently makes the attacking birds think they have been spotted, silly things

That is fascinating! I never really understood how adding eyes would eyes would help, but I certainly see your point. Could you share a pic of your drone with eyes?

Deleted member 25239 · May 23, 2020

Folks on here have said they don't think birds *want* to hit drones. I think they're right. A bird will only very rarely (never say never!) 'kamikaze' another bird in flight (an intruder), because it probably instinctively knows it will likely take both of them down. Sure, it has happened, but you have to be very unlucky and it likely hasn't happened nearly as much as myth and folklore would have you believe. We all know birds will accidentally fly into glass that they can't see, and when stationary might peck at their own reflections in glass to ward off the 'intruder'. But not in flight. If a bird hits your drone in flight, more often than not, it's an accident. But will they do high-speed flybys and near misses (don't know why that's not called near hits) to warn off the intruder .... yes .... when it comes to territory and the defending thereof, many birds show no fear. BTW despite what appears to be housing close around me, I was in the middle of a huge park, football-field sized ... and I was alone in the park.

Smalls · May 23, 2020

Sheppie said:
Almost got Goosed here, Check out 6:48 of video. Just call me Sully.

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This was a cool shot of the birds flying by at 6:48!! Not something ya get to see often

Mavy710 · May 23, 2020

Well, I don't have the MA2, but I have the mini with a red skin. Sometimes I like to check the new 5g towers here in Toronto, to get a pretty look, but pigeons don't like it at all when I get close, especially seagulls. They get in flocks and they circle around the drone, eventually getting closer to hit the drone. So I'm forced to either fly high or close and low. Ive flown and been attacked by seagulls. I'm not too sure why. But the birds in the city are aggressive for some reason. More around signal towers.

phantomi · May 23, 2020

Vaideeshwar said:
Not sure who you are referring to, but nobody is immune from the threat from birds. If it was the video of the drone almost getting hit by the flock of geese, he was flying over barren land, and even if the bird would have hit the drone, it wouldn't have created an incident.

The threat from birds is very real and always existent. Despite your best maintenance measures and experience, you can get knocked out of the sky by a diving falcon.

You sense of humor isn't.

rehkram · May 23, 2020

An osprey (I think it was) nearly took out my MM, see Seagulls

My instinctive and somewhat delayed reaction was to descend fast and fly low back to the home point. It happened within 100 feet (estimated) of where I was standing at estimated 80 ft altitude and I had the craft in sight so I saw the whole thing, but not the bird's approach. I was pretty shocked and slow to react.

If I hadn't had VLOS I would have just kept flying, completely oblivious since the bird did not show on the video. It flew off and did not try a second time.

Next time I'd probably aim to hit sport mode and descend- and run for home much faster. We have a lot of raptors around here in the warm months, from merlins & kestrals, thru peregrins to the bigger hawks and grey owls. Did I mention the bat squadron living in my attic... Could be an interesting summer.

hhung516 · May 24, 2020

Also watched a bird attack video someone posted in a FB group yesterday. You guys think MA2 being white makes it an easy target? I wonder if a darker skin would somehow deter the birds, regardless of the size of the aircraft.

Disclaimer: no intention of being racist whatsoever.

Deleted member 94047 · May 24, 2020

There was one case of a lost M2P posted in the crash forum where the likely cause was a bird attack.

Mavic Pro 2 Motor Failure : crash and lost. What to do ?

Hi there ! Sad day for me today. My Drone crashed after a short 6 month life, and I have no money to buy another one… There were no wind, no obstacles, It had still enough batteries. The Drone was flying normally, and after completing a 360 panorama, it suddenly falled of around 15 meters in...

mavicpilots.com

Never underestimate birds - especially birds of prey. If you spot them in time, get the hell out of their air space.

Thomas B · May 24, 2020

Vaideeshwar said:
I would've almost lost my MA2 yesterday to a bird! It is definitely not the first time I encountered a bird, but definitely the most scariest!
I usually fly up to 100m right after takeoff to avoid any birds flying the Dallas area. My protocol when I encounter a bird is to switch the aircraft to sport mode and push the throttle to max. That usually helps me gain altitude after which I fly away from the bird. Mostly, curious birds just fly close to the drone and don't really bother it.

Yesterday, however, this bird viciously circled my drone. When I say circled, it was like a meter away from the drone. This started when I was 75m up in the air and no attempt to fly away would have worked since I was afraid of crashing it into buildings/cars/people. My only option was to lower the altitude (since the then-current position of the drone was over a grass land), which I did and this bird circled my drone down until 5 m away from the ground! I think it was a predatory bird since it rarely flapped its wings after it flew away (it wasn't large either).

This incident has me thinking about the worst- what would happen if the mavic indeed gets attacked by it? I am assuming that the bird will suffer injuries from the props, but that impact should also lower the rpm of the bird-impacted motor, causing the Mavic to tilt on one side. Would the Mavic come crashing to the ground because of the tilt (usually tilting the mavic shuts it off, right?) or would the motor regain its rpm and cause the aircraft to stabilize some point below the original altitude? If anything, I think the folding props help the drone in this case because the pro would simply fold at the time of impact, killing the flow of stress at the pivot point rather than transmitting it all the way to the center of the prop, as it would in the case of a non-folding prop.

Can anybody who has encountered a similar situation share how they dealt with it? And would anybody have any comment on the protocol I followed (lowering it) when this bird started circling my drone?

Here’s vid where I had a bird make several passes getting progressively closer to my M2P... after the last pass I just exited the area and landed... Check out the video:

Terry63 · May 25, 2020

dlmvegas said:
I have a humming bird that seems to be attracted to my drone when I shoot it up in the air. It just sits in front of the drone while it's in the air. Must be the propeller sound that attracts them.

Some humming bird pics would be cool

Vaideeshwar said:
I agree, not all birds want to hit the drone, some are just curious, some are threatened and the rest see it as prey.

As the OP, I have a mini update.
I flew in the same spot as the day when the bird started wilding circling the drone. As soon as I got off the air, there were flocks of different species of birds chirping and trying to scare the drone away. I reckon they have their nests in nearby trees. On the day of the incident, as @Simone L suggested, the bird that started circling my drone was definitely a bird of prey (I think a Harrier Hawk), which, I guess, was attracted to the scene by the buffet of small birds flying below it. As soon as the smaller birds (that were originally chasing the drone) sensed the predator, they flee, leaving the drone the only target in the sky for the Hawk to pursue.

Moral of the story: don't fly in an area densely populated by trees. If you have to, take it high up to 100m or more.

Or the hawk may of considered your drone unwanted competition.

I witnessed a confrontation between an osprey and a red tailed hawk once. I can't remember all the details but finally the hawk (by far the larger of the two) started a widening spiral ascent and disappeared from my view and apparently the osprey's also. As I was watching the osprey fly around after a while I noticed a tiny speck in the sky in the area of the osprey. As the speck rapidly increased in size I realized it was the red tailed hawk diving. I was too far away to tell exactly how much the hawk missed by, probably at least the hawks wing span. The dive speed was incredible if the birds had of hit I don't see how either one of them could have stayed in the air. After that the osprey meandered away.

Drgnfli · May 26, 2020

swooshdave said:
Birds don't really want to hit the drone, they may get close to "scare it away" but I don't think they would hit it.

Guess again! I had a raptor of some sort knock the hell out of my MP, left claw marks on the battery & topside parts & cracked a propeller. I was taking a video when it struck from above, knocked my MP 90 degrees to the left but it recovered & the disruption of flight could be seen on my video. Luckily I could fly it home. Did not see the bird before or after the ATTACK. I hope it didn't break one of the birds legs... or maybe I do...LOL!

Vaideeshwar · May 26, 2020

Drgnfli said:
Guess again! I had a raptor of some sort knock the hell out of my MP, left claw marks on the battery & topside parts & cracked a propeller. I was taking a video when it struck from above, knocked my MP 90 degrees to the left but it recovered & the disruption of flight could be seen on my video. Luckily I could fly it home. Did not see the bird before or after the ATTACK. I hope it didn't break one of the birds legs... or maybe I do...LOL!

So is it safe to assume that post a bird attack, if the drone is at a sufficient altitude above ground level, it will stabilize at some point during the descent provided that the battery is still intact and the props haven't broken?

Joe650 · May 26, 2020

This is from one of our comm towers. I was doing some flight training out here as it's nice and wide open. The bird was building a nest and was actually gone when I flew up. It returned and didn't seem overly concerned with the drone. I was flying a M2Z so not as close as the video would make you think I was. Sorry, I didn't do any editing or add any music.

Terry63 · May 26, 2020

Vaideeshwar said:
So is it safe to assume that post a bird attack, if the drone is at a sufficient altitude above ground level, it will stabilize at some point during the descent provided that the battery is still intact and the props haven't broken?

I think most likely it would recover given those conditions. If it is knocked out of level 90 degrees or more I think the drone may loose its self-righting ability. Recently there was a video on a thread on this site where one of the newer mavics backs into an overhead crane looses 1/2 of a propeller and still is able to land, on the verge of losing control.