This reminds me of Avatar.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have become unlikely prey for wedge-tailed eagles in Western Australia's Goldfields, costing a mining giant more than $100,000 to replace its newest surveying tool.

Ten UAVs have been lost since South Africa's Gold Fields, the world's seventh-biggest gold producer, began operating the Trimble UX5 systems at its St Ives operations near Kambalda.

One crashed as a result of human error, while nine have been taken down by wedge-tailed eagles, which are known to have wingspans more than twice that of the 1-metre-wide UAVs.

The UAVs are constructed from foam and carbon fibre, and fly at an altitude of about 125 metres, reaching speeds of up to 92km/h.

Razor-sharp talons have turned the wedge-tailed eagles into what St Ives Mine surveyor Rick Steven calls "the natural enemy of the UAV".

So how did the humans respond? By going bigger. How did that work out?

SYDNEY— Daniel Parfitt thought he’d found the perfect drone for a two-day mapping job in a remote patch of the Australian Outback. The roughly $80,000 machine had a wingspan of 7 feet and resembled a stealth bomber.

There was just one problem. His machine raised the hackles of one prominent local resident: a wedge-tailed eagle.
Swooping down from above, the eagle used its talons to punch a hole in the carbon fiber and Kevlar fuselage of Mr. Parfitt’s drone, which lost control and plummeted to the ground.

“I had 15 minutes to go on my last flight on my last day, and one of these wedge-tailed eagles just dive-bombed the drone and punched it out of the sky,” said Mr. Parfitt, who believed the drone was too big for a bird to damage. “It ended up being a pile of splinters.”