Sea eagle turns CAMERAMAN:
Bird steals equipment to film 65-mile flight along banks of Australian river
When a camera trap set up on the banks of Australia’s Kimberley’s Margaret River went missing earlier this year, local rangers assumed it had fallen into the water.
Yet three weeks later the camera was found almost 65 miles upriver and the footage revealed it had actually been stolen by a sea eagle.
The wings of the eagle are shown flapping during the one-minute clip before the bird lands and pecks at the screen.
The Gooniyandi Indigenous Rangers, including Roneil Skeen, set up the trap to capture footage of saltwater crocodiles in Northwest Australia.
On a routine check of the traps, Mr Skeen noticed the camera had gone missing and assumed it had been washed away.
A passer-by called the rangers three weeks later to say they had found the camera around 65 miles upriver from where the trap was set.
Once Mr Skeen examined the footage he discovered that a juvenile sea eagle had picked up the camera, flown for around 20 seconds before landing and pecking the screen.
The first shots show the wings of the bird flapping as it flies along the river, it is then placed on the rocks on the river bed before capturing the full face of the winged thief.
‘Unexpectedly our camera went missing,’ Skeen told ABC Kimberley, ‘we thought that it had fallen into the water but a juvenile sea eagle came and took-off with it.’ It is not the first time birds have been caught interacting with cameras in the wild.
In August a colony of Gentoo penguins tried to pick up a GoPro camera that had been set up on the Falkland Islands.