It's been a tough year for elegant terns in Southern California. A drone crash in June forced an estimated 3,000 of the sleek seabirds with their pointed orange bills to abandon their eggs on Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Orange County. Experts say it's possible that many of the birds set up camp on two commercial barges in nearby Long Beach Harbor. Now droves of the baby birds are falling into the ocean and drowning. "They basically landed on the barge a day or so, and it may have been two or three days, after the incident involving the drones when they left Bolsa Chica," said Tim Daly, spokesman for California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund announced Thursday a reward of $5,000 for information on the person or people who operated a drone that crashed-landed in May into nesting grounds at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach. About 3,000 elegant terns -- notable for their orange bills and black crests -- fled the reserve after the crash in mid-May. They left behind 1,500 to 2,000 unsavable eggs, the largest abandonment that scientists who work there could remember. The operators of drones that fly over state wildlife preserves and disturb habitats can face charges for nest destruction and harassment of wildlife, according to Officer Nick Molsberry of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Tim Daly, a spokesperson for the agency, said that he had no knowledge of the drone operator in the Bolsa Chica incident having been identified or of the birds having returned to the reserve, which spans more than 1,000 acres.

Eggs littered the sand, but there was no sign of life around or in them. The seabirds that should have been keeping watch had taken off, terrified by a drone that crash-landed into their nesting grounds on an island at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve. "We've never seen such devastation here," said Melissa Loebl, an environmental scientist who manages the Huntington Beach reserve. "This has been really hard for me as a manager." Some 3,000 elegant terns fled the reserve after the drone crashed May 12, leaving behind 1,500 to 2,000 eggs, none of them viable.