Australia’s Kimberley region is the ultimate wilderness, with its ocher, sandstone gorges and waterfalls that plunge over cliffs. ©Roderick Eime, flickr

The recent popularity of GoPros and other helmet cameras have certainly given us some amazing footage of the natural world, the likes of which have never been viewed before. Now, it seems, an eagle in western Australia has picked up on the trend.

Shortly after rangers set up a motion-sensor camera at a gorge on the Margaret River in the Kimberley—a beautiful stretch of rugged coast—to try and capture images of freshwater crocodiles, the camera went missing. The rangers thought it fell into the water and was gone forever. But a few weeks later, they received a phone call from another ranger who had found the device near the Mary River, almost 70 miles away.

What the rangers discovered when they retrieved the video astounded them. The footage revealed that a juvenile eagle had scooped up the camera and then took flight. While other camera traps in the region had been moved by animals before, this marked one of the first times such a piece of equipment was picked up and flown over remote terrain.

Pixabay

There are two species of crocodiles in the Kimberley: the freshwater or “Freshie” (“Crocodylus Johnsoni”) and the saltwater or Estuarine (“Crocodylus porosus”), also known as the “Saltie.”

After reviewing the footage, the rangers surmised that this particular eagle was young. Adult eagles, after lifting food or prey high into the air, usually drop it. This camera-stealing eagle, however, flies to a cliff but never lets go of the camera. The bird simply places it on the ground and starts to peck at it.

The rangers were able to extract three, 30-second clips from the recovered footage, a minute of which you can watch, below.

While the unusual angles are a bit disorienting, I’d say it’s a good first effort from a young, action-camera-wielding director.

Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,

Candy