ABOVE: Check out the hawk vs. drone battle! (Credit: Christopher Schmidt)
Like Snoopy lying on his dog house, a leisurely afternoon looking skyward suddenly turned into an aerial dogfight.
But in this case, it wasn’t the Red Baron who menaced the skies – and unlike Snoopy’s daydreams, this battle was both real, and brief.

Get breaking National news
Software developer and amateur drone pilot Christopher Schmidt was taking his FC40 quadcopter drone out for a spin in a public park in Cambridge, Massachusetts Wednesday when he inadvertently got the attention of a nearby hawk.
Whether out of hunger, territorial protection, or because he just doesn’t like drones, the hawk suddenly launched himself at the hovering drone.
And because Schmidt had attached a GoPro camera to his drone, the entire battle was caught on video.
“As far as I could tell, the hawk came out unscathed, and having defeated his prey, was happy to retreat,” Schmidt wrote in a posting on YouTube. “As soon as he flew at me, I throttled down the props to try to minimize any harm to the bird.”
“The quadcopter came out unscathed as well.”
Comments