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woof OUCH woof OUCH.

Blackbirds dive-bombing Chicago residents - Telegraph

… Holly Grosso, a local businesswoman, said she was talking on her mobile phone on a Chicago street last week when Hitchcock went for her.

“Something just came down, pecked me in the head, took my hair and started flying away,” she said. “It’s so bizarre. It’s this little bird.”

So many of her colleagues at a marketing firm have been pecked that they are taking precautions.

Tara Soltow said she had to find a new route home after being attacked twice while Clare McDermott, a colleague, said she now never rides to work without wearing a helmet.

Cyclists are particularly popular - and helpless - targets. “It’s making people so they’re not being alert when they’re biking,” Miss Soltow told the Chicago Tribune. “Bikers are going to fall off and maybe get hit by traffic.”

Douglas Stotz, a conservation ornithologist at the city’s Field Museum, said Chicagoans should be particularly wary of dive-bombing blackbirds near parks, around ponds and especially along the shores of Lake Michigan.

Mr Stotz advised anyone targeted by an angry blackbird to stare directly at it. If that fails, barking like a dog should keep it away, he said.

Last updated on Tuesday, June 24, 2008