Solo color scares wildlife

Freebird32 · Nov 10, 2016

I fly both Solo and a P3. I have made an informal observation that when I fly the Solo over the same cattle egrets as I fly the P3, the birds all scatter as it approaches. When I fly the P3 they watch it but don't seem too alarmed and don't scatter/take off. Same goes for cattle I fly over. They tend to start trotting off when the Solo approaches, but only take a mild interest in the P3 when I fly to or over them at the same altitude, they are not alarmed by the P3. I am assuming this is a direct affect from the color, black seeming more like a 'predator' or dangerous than a white object. For the cows maybe just looks like an odd egret. Anyone else notice this kind of behavior with any wildlife?

Don H. · Nov 10, 2016

Freebird32 said:
I fly both Solo and a P3. I have made an informal observation that when I fly the Solo over the same cattle egrets as I fly the P3, the birds all scatter as it approaches. When I fly the P3 they watch it but don't seem too alarmed and don't scatter/take off. Same goes for cattle I fly over. They tend to start trotting off when the Solo approaches, but only take a mild interest in the P3 when I fly to or over them at the same altitude, they are not alarmed by the P3. I am assuming this is a direct affect from the color, black seeming more like a 'predator' or dangerous than a white object. For the cows maybe just looks like an odd egret. Anyone else notice this kind of behavior with any wildlife?

I found the opposite results last week when filming on a small lake in the Easter Sierras. The Mud Hens or Coots didn't even look twice while it was hovering within a few feet of them about three feet high.
I thought it was odd they didn't react since the Solo isn't very quiet.

Freebird32 · Nov 10, 2016

Interesting, they didn't scatter. I haven't gotten that close to the cows or egrets. I thought Solo was very noisy as well, compared to the P3. The National parks folks were concerned that drones would scare the bison, bears etc, one of the reasons that they banned drones from parks.

Don H. · Nov 10, 2016

You can see them on the vid here. If you drag through the vid to the end you will see them bobbing around looking for food at the 3:00 minute mark. You can see the wake on the water from the prop blast.

Freebird32 · Nov 10, 2016

Very cool. What a great setting to fly in. The birds didn't seem alarmed by the Solo. I saw your note about the video speed, I've not seen that happen before. Did you do any post processing or is that a raw upload?

Don H. · Nov 10, 2016

It was probably something I did. I hadn't used the GoPro Studio before. I was clicking around on things but didn't see where I had sped things up. It was uploaded and then converted to .AVI format then back to MP4 because it takes to long to upload an AVI file to YouTube.

PICSPORADIC · Nov 12, 2016

Can't comment on in the p3 but I've had a whole herd of dairy cows running from my solo before here in VT and I was flying pretty high about 100 ft off the ground. It scared them - don't want to sour the milk!