Bird steals camera, shoots aerial footage of penguin colony

A hungry bird, mistaking a camouflaged camera for a penguin egg, becomes an unwitting film-maker.

It's hard not to be suspicious of "a crazy animal stole my GoPro" stories; they're always a little too pat, leaving out the specifics of camera recovery and shooting footage that's just a little too perfect.

This, however, looks like the real deal. Aside from the fact that the camera brand is never mentioned, there are enough other cameras around to show what happens from start to finish. This is because the camera in question was camouflaged by documentarians as a penguin egg to get up-close-and-personal footage of the birds for BBC One program Penguins — Spy in the Huddle.

The camera was spotted by a hungry Striated Caracara, which eats penguin eggs in the Falkland Islands. Unfortunately, all the real penguin eggs had already hatched and the egg-cam proved too tempting for the bird to resist. It scooped up the camera and flew over the penguin colony, capturing a few glorious seconds of aerial footage before dropping the camera.

Which was then promptly set upon by hungry Turkey Vultures. Perhaps this should serve as an indication that more animal spy-cams should be disguised as food — it's certainly entertaining.

Source: Cnet

"This may be an anti imperialist Argentinian bird trying to sabotage any Anglo operations on the Falkland Islands which the British snatched from Argentina (real name Malvinas Islands)." - A.N

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