Bird's eye view: Eagle sets record diving from Burj Khalifa

Saturday, March 14, 2015, 11:45 AM - An eastern imperial eagle, mounted with a camera, has set a new world record.

The eagle, called Darshan, took wing from the top of Dubai's Burj Khalifa on Saturday, an 830 m drop that is the highest-known bird flight from a man-made structure.

It was carried live by the BBC (the eagle cam footage is above), and organized by Freedom Conservation, an NGO trying to draw attention to the challenges faced by endangered eagles.

The camera wasn't much of a burden, from the looks of things. It's a specially designed device weighing only 300 grams. The eagle itself was expected to reach a top speed of 200 km/h.

Freedom Conservation's speciality is preparing eagles bred at a facility in France to survive in the wild, to the point of paragliding beside them to get them used to flying free.

But the NGO also uses eagle-cam stunts to draw public attention to declining eagle populations. Here's footage from Darshan's last high profile flight last year over major landmarks in London:

"We like to think that we do things in an original way," Freedom Conservation director Richard Menzel said at a press conference in Dubai last week. "If you want to be successful in conservation, you need to not only be able to re-introduce animals, but you also need to involve the public and create public demand for the presence of birds of prey.”

Eastern imperial eagles are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

SOURCE: BBC | IUCN | Khaleej Times

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