HUNTGINGTON BEACH, Calif. — About 2,000 elegant tern chicks should be preparing to hatch on a Southern California nesting island, but a Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve beach is, instead, littered with orphaned, unviable eggs following a series of disruptions that culminated with two recent drone crashes.
According to the Los Angeles Times, a May 12 drone crash prompted about 3,000 adult elegant terns to flee, but reserve officials are hopeful that video from the unmanned aircraft will lend a little context to the mass exodus.
A drone crashed in a nesting area for elegant terns, scaring off about 2,500 birds at a protected sanctuary in Huntington Beach, California. Left behind were about 1,500 eggs, none of which were viable after they were abandoned. https://t.co/6JTgSm431n
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 5, 2021
Officer Nick Molsberry of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told the newspaper that he is working with the Orange County district attorney’s office to secure a warrant for the lawful retrieval of the drone’s video footage and location history.
“We will hopefully have some great footage of the user and what the drone did, its flight path, and be able to articulate all the elements we need to fulfill the violation for this person,” he said.
Molsberry also confirmed said that the May 12 crash was actually the second one recorded in a 24-hour period.
Melissa Loebl, an environmental scientist who manages the reserve, told the newspaper that the drone operator from the May 11 incident, which crashed in Bolsa Chica near nesting sites of the California least tern and the snowy plover, came forward to claim the device and was ticketed.
Michael Horn, a professor emeritus of biology at California State University at Fullerton told The Washington Post that drones, which are prohibited on state reserves, can resemble a “giant bird, a giant predator” to the reserve’s inhabitants.
The roughly 1,300-acre Huntington Beach, California, reserve currently houses more than 800 species of plants, animals and fish across a variety of habitats, including open water, coastal dunes, salt and freshwater marshes, and seabird nesting islands, the Post reported.
Horn told the newspaper that the elegant tern typically arrives at the reserve’s grounds in April or May for the beginning of its reproductive cycle, and after the birds mate, they build a nest in the sand where females usually lay one egg, but sometimes two. After the egg hatches, it can take weeks for the chicks to become airborne and depart the island with their parents.
Roger Lederer, a professor emeritus of biological sciences at California State University at Chico, told the Post in an email that birds “don’t abandon their nests very easily,” but an influx of visitors since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and especially the increased presence of cyclists and off-leash dogs, have altered the reserve’s natural vibe.
“I suspect there has been continual stress put on the bird colony, and the drone crash was the last straw,” Lederer wrote.
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