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#Spooked terns abandon 2,000 eggs after drone crash

“#Spooked terns abandon 2,000 eggs after drone crash”

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“Drone owners are attracted by the nesting colonies of birds, and then their actions destroy it,” said a warden for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Nick Molsberry.
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About 2,000 tern eggs in California were abandoned after an illegal drone flight over their hatching area ended with a crash, spooking the ground-nesting birds.

That was one of two illegal flights on May 13 that ended with a crash in the protected Bolsa Chica wetlands west of Anaheim — the other drone only temporarily flushed another group of terns from their nests, before they returned, the Orange County Register reported.

“It’s ironic,” a warden for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Nick Molsberry, told the paper. “Drone owners are attracted by the nesting colonies of birds, and then their actions destroy it.”

Molsberry said only one of the drone operators has come forward — and been cited. He said he plans to access the memory card of the other to try to find the owner.

This undated photo provided by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife show some 3,000 elegant tern eggs that were recently abandoned on a nesting island at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach, Calif., after a drone, prohibited in the area, crashed and scared off the would be parents. — The drone crash occurred in the protected Bolsa Chica wetlands west of Anaheim, Calif.

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