There’s been aerial combat over the streets of Canberra with ravens attacking delivery drones.
There’s a different kind of swooping season occurring in Canberra’s suburbs that’s stopping delivery of coffee, food and medicine.
Territorial ravens have taken umbrage at drones flying through their skies and have swooped the tiny ‘copters carrying goods.
The drone’s deliver small products as part of Wing, a program ran in collaboration with Google, that services areas in the ACT. But some have been waylaid.
Ben Roberts was waiting for his daily coffee when he suddenly noticed that his drone was under attack.
He managed to film the raven hanging onto the back of the aircraft and furiously pecking it with its beak.
The drone struggled to fly under the weight of the large bird but Mr Roberts was still able to have his breakfast delivered safely.
‘They are certainly very territorial at the moment,’ he told the ABC.
‘From their point of view, they’re very intelligent birds, what must a drone look like to them? It would be like a flying saucer landing in our front yard to us.’
A spokesman for Wing told The Daily Mail the drones are operating as normal in other suburbs and they were yet to learn of any birds being injured from the aircraft.
“As is common during nesting season, certain bird species demonstrate territorial behaviour and swoop at moving objects,” the spokesman said.
“In the unlikely event that a bird makes direct contact with our drone, we have multiple levels of redundancy built into our operations to ensure we can continue to fly safely.”
It comes as magpie experts fear the birds will ramp up their swooping of humans during the upcoming spring breeding season because Australians are wearing Covid-19 masks.
The intelligent creatures remember individual facial features and stop swooping those who enter their territory regularly. However, Covid-19 masks make it difficult for a magpie to learn a person’s face, and they are particularly territorial during spring breeding.
Griffith University magpie expert Darryl Jones said the mask wearing could lead to magpies wanting to “belt” everyone.
“The mask comes into this story because most of the magpies which swoop pedestrians, do so to only one or two individuals who for some reason have become regarded as a threat,” he told NCA NewsWire.
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