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The eagle has landed, but EGLE — Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy — was not so lucky.

Last month, Hunter King, one of the department's drone pilots, was using a quadcopter to photograph the Lake Michigan coast to track shore erosion.

Suddenly, he started getting warnings on his screen — lots of them — including one indicating that a propeller had come off the drone.

"I was looking through the camera on the drone with my iPad, and it just went into a spiral," King tells NPR.

When he glanced up, the drone was gone and a suspicious looking bald eagle was soaring away.