A bald eagle once took down a $950 drone owned by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy and sent it crashing into Lake Michigan.
While this claim spread in 2026, the actual incident happened in 2020.
A claim is spreading online that a bald eagle attacked a $950 “government drone” in midair, sending it crashing into Lake Michigan.
Social media users shared the story on Facebook and Reddit, prompting Snopes readers to search the website to determine whether a bald eagle had, in fact, launched a successful attack against a foreign object in its airspace.
This story is true — although it happened years ago, not in 2026. It is also worth noting that while some posts online appear to show a bald eagle flying at a drone, there is no actual footage of the incident, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE — the agency whose drone lost to the eagle.
Michigan state officials confirmed the eagle’s assault in an Aug. 13, 2020, news release titled, “Shoreline-mapping EGLE drone sent to watery Lake Michigan grave by U.P. bald eagle.” (U.P. is a reference to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.)
Here’s how that release began:
An Upper Peninsula bald eagle launched an airborne attack on a drone operated by a Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) pilot last month, tearing off a propeller and sending the aircraft to the bottom of Lake Michigan.
The brazen eagle vs. EGLE onslaught took place near Escanaba in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on July 21 when EGLE environmental quality analyst and drone pilot Hunter King was mapping shoreline erosion for use in the agency’s efforts to document and help communities cope with high water levels.
King had completed about seven minutes of the mapping flight — his fourth of the day in the area — when satellite reception got spotty. He pressed the “Go Home” recall button. The drone dutifully turned, reacquiring a strong satellite feed.
King was watching his video screen as the drone beelined for home, but suddenly it began twirling furiously. “It was like a really bad rollercoaster ride,” said King. When he looked up, the drone was gone, and an eagle was flying away. A nearby couple, whose pastimes include watching the local eagles attack seagulls and other birds, later confirmed they saw the eagle strike something but were surprised to learn it was a drone. Both King and the couple said the eagle appeared uninjured as it flew from the scene of the crime.
The release also confirmed that the drone was “a $950 Phantom 4 Pro Advanced” and shared data indicating that the eagle tore off a propeller, as many of the claim posts said (emphasis ours):
Data from the flight records detailed the drone’s final moments:
- The eagle strike occurred 7:39.7 into the flight roughly four-tenths of a mile from King and 162 feet above the water
- Its speed instantly dropped from 22 mph to 10. Within a half-second the flight record shows the beginning of downward spiral along with “excessive spinning” warnings
- In the next 3.5 seconds the drone sent 27 warning notifications including one indicating a propeller had been torn off
- Gaining momentum as it fell, its last communication came at 34 feet above the water, falling at 30 feet per second, or 20.4 mph.
Per the release, King and the unidentified couple searched for the drone, “but hours of scouring the shoreline were fruitless.” An unmanned aircraft systems coordinator with the state agency, Arthur Ostaszewski, also attempted to find the drone using a kayak, snorkeling gear and “telemetric data from the flight that pinpointed exactly where the drone hit the lake.” He, too, was unsuccessful, even after walking a grid pattern for two hours — “like I was playing Battleship and wanted to cover the entire board,” he said.
A week later, however, a team of Michigan state employees — which the agency cheekily dubbed in a news release as the Willful Eagle Trauma Team Engaged in Retrieval, or WETTER — managed to uncover the drone in almost the exact same location after “the previously murky water had cleared due to shifting winds and currents.” EGLE shared a few pictures of the recovery effort on X, then known as Twitter:
The agency noted that the drone was not recording at the time of the bald eagle’s assault, meaning that there would not be any footage of the fight over airspace.
Michigan officials speculated that the attack could have been “a territorial squabble with the electronic foe, or just a hungry eagle.”
“Or maybe it did not like its name being misspelled,” EGLE said, poking fun at its agency acronym.
At the time, EGLE said it was considering steps to try to prevent a repeat attack, including adding a design to make the drones look less like seagulls. Snopes found no evidence of any bald eagle drone attacks since EGLE’s incident in 2020, however, so this may have just been a one-time thing.
EGLE also said the Michigan Department of Natural Resources was unable to issue a citation or violation notice to the “rogue eagle.”
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do,” the agency’s spokesman said. “Nature is a cruel and unforgiving mistress.”
