‘Very Irritated’ Seagulls Are Waging Battle on NYC’s Seaside Drones

It seems that the seaside hen inhabitants of New York Metropolis is completely fed up with a lately deployed armada of police drones which are encroaching on their territory. A report from the Related Press describes repeated “swarming” incidents during which the indignant shorebirds have dive-bombed the flying robots in an try and expel them from their house.

Earlier this yr, the NYPD made the questionable determination to start deploying drones on the metropolis’s seashores. The purpose was to permit them to seek for sharks (in order to warn beachgoers and keep away from a Jaws-type scenario) and likewise to assist swimmers who may be struggling, and who have been out of attain of the native lifeguard. The plan, apparently, was to have the robots fly over drowning swimmers and drop flotation gadgets on their heads.

Whereas the drones have to this point saved zero human lives, they’ve managed to significantly agitate the native hen inhabitants, which has been repeatedly seen “swarming” and dive-bombing the flying robots. The AP quotes a number of wildlife teachers and professionals, most of whom appear to suppose that the drones are having some form of adversarial impact on the seaside birds. Specialists say the birds may even see the robots as an invasive species, one that may be a risk to their offspring.

Veronica Welsh, a wildlife skilled on the metropolis’s Parks Division, informed the outlet that the birds are “very aggravated by the drones” and “will fly at it, they’ll swoop at it, they’ll be vocalizing…They suppose they’re defending their chicks from a predator.”

The article additionally quotes a wildlife biology professor from McGill College who, fairly amazingly, is called David Chook. Chook, the hen professor, tells us that the birds in query, recognized technically as American oystercatchers, may be triggered by the flying robots into having a “stress response,” which, he mentioned, may trigger them to “flee the seaside and abandon their eggs, as a number of thousand elegant terns did following a recent drone crash in San Diego.”

Oystercatchers, the native populations of which primarily nest on Rockaway seaside, “are extremely endangered” mentioned Chook, entire additionally added that if “they abandon their nests due to the drones, that may be a catastrophe.”

Gizmodo reached out to the NYPD for extra info on its drone program however didn’t obtain an instantaneous response.

Replace, July 12, 3:46 p.m. ET: Now we have up to date this publish to mirror the truth that the birds on this story will not be, in actual fact, seagulls. We remorse the error, but additionally I’m not an ornithologist, folks.