Look Out !! Here Come the Birds

Here's one threat that Homeland Security hasn't prepared for: dive-bombing birds.

The critters have pecked several pedestrians in Pacific Palisades, reported the Palisadian-Post, which landed an exclusive because its managing editor, Bill Bruns, was one of the victims.

Bruns later told me he was walking to work on Swarthmore Avenue when "suddenly I felt bird feet tangled in my hair…. We had been hearing about this bird but I was preoccupied and not thinking about being attacked. I shook my head and the bird flew up and away."

He identified the culprit as a mockingbird.

The next day he walked to work on the other side of Swarthmore — you can't be too safe in the Palisades — when "I was attacked by two blackbirds. They didn't land on my head, but pecked at me and then flew up to the overhanging eaves and made a commotion."

Odd, but I also recall instances of birds zeroing in on the heads of older men in Long Beach and Santa Monica in previous years.

The attacks in the Palisades seemed to be a case of "a mommy protecting her nest," a pet hospital worker told the Post's Sue Pascoe. Once the eggs are hatched, the worker said, the danger will be over.