The authorities said they were hoping to identify the operator of a drone that crashed in a nesting area for elegant terns, leading 2,500 of the birds to flee the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Frightened Terns Abandon 1,500 Eggs After a Rogue Drone Crash-Landed on Nesting Island
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Photo: Mohammed Al-Shaikh, Getty Images
Roughly 1,500 elegant tern eggs were abandoned at a southern California nesting island after a rogue drone crash-landed and scared off thousands of birds, the Orange County Register and New York Times reported this week.
Two drones were flown illegally over the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, a stretch of protected coastal wetlands in Southern California, on May 13, according to the Register. When one of the drones went down on the reserve’s largest nesting island, several thousand terns fled their ground nests, fearing an attack from predators.