Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

I'm a birder, so some extra info...

On dogs, training and leashes only matter a little. The problem is birds immediately identify a dog as a dangerous predator. They are far less bothered by humans.

Birds pay more attention that we might realize. They identify potential threats from much farther away that we do. This leads to them being disturbed even when the casual rule-breaking dog walker thinks "I'm not doing anything wrong."

I'm extremely surprised so many birds abandoned their nests permanently. I would have expected only the closest nests to be abandoned.

Some people rely on their drones to tell them when they are in a no-fly zone. Terrible idea. Once at Hayward Regional Shoreline, I had to tell a guy that he was potentially creating a problem. I told him the two locations where endangered species can be found and that he should avoid -- and also that he was definitely within the limits of Hayward Regional Airport. He was both contrite and horrified that his drone didn't tell him.

They other issue is boundary-pushing. Literally. Give people a space, and many people will act like selfish toddlers and push the boundaries. Sunnyvale Baylands allows drones and it's a great space for them. There is a clearly marked fence they must not go beyond. So of course people constantly violate the fence. The fence is to a marshland with endangered species. Drones can fail, and a drone that falls into the marsh is not retrievable and then what happens to the toxins in the battery?

How do these birds exist in the wild if a single predator sighting causes them to abandon their eggs? Edit: I'm downvoted, so this is a legitimate question. How could it be that these birds have lasted when one predator causes the abandonment of 3000 eggs? Has no predator ever appeared on these islands?

It was more than just "a single predator sighting." The article says it was two drones and one of them crashed, which is a lot more dramatic. They didn't say how close the crash was to the nesting birds. And they didn't say how long the drones were flying around and how they were flying around before the birds decided to abandon. We don't know, perhaps they were buzzing the terns at a low altitude, or hovering for a long time in a way that looked like a falcon.

There's a big difference between a dangerous looking person passing you by on a busy street, and one that's standing on the sidewalk in front of your house, staring at your window for an hour.

Some birds are very neophobic. And some types of birds have less commitment to eggs than chicks -- a new nest and new eggs can be laid, but actual hatched chicks are much harder to abandon. Terns are very social, so a few abandoning their nests might easily lead to a mass exodus.

Admittedly the drone crashing is more than a sighting, but it still stands that that is less than what a real predator would do. I just cant imagine these birds surviving while they abandon all that en mass every time a falcon attacks them. Seems like there has to be more to this story

Sounds to me like they were chasing away the birds for giggles and then a drone crashed.

It's quite possible. According to https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/generation-seabirds-wiped-dr... , while a news crew was interviewing the environmental scientist in charge and a DFW officer, a third person brought and began flying a drone, sending it directly toward another tern colony. I suspect that being buzzed by drones has been going on for a while and perhaps the crash was just the last straw.

That's exactly why I'm surprised. I don't understand why the birds don't come back after the excitement is over -- except possibly the ones closest to the crash site.

Is it possible that in the circumstances, they can't find their nests? I assume that normally all the birds don't fly off all at once, so maybe that makes it easier to find their nests - perhaps they remember whose nests are next to whom (or is that too complex for birds?)- but when all the birds fly off at once then it becomes impossible to find one's own nest?

I believe they will all flush (i.e. fly away for defense) when a predator wanders by, so they have a survival mechanism for re-finding their nest.

I don't think people are used to following the rules anymore. Not when they themselves have to check. People like automatic control systems. In this case, something that bricks the drone if it goes across the fence :) (But that's just my tongue-in-cheek solution).

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