Crazy grackles
I'm having a flashback.
Anyone remember a few years ago when the grackles in Austin started acting OUTTA CONTROL???
Our own George Kuempel, then-Austin bureau reporter, was attacked on camera while helping out our Belo TV friends here do a report on them. (If I can find the video, I'll post it. It's hysterical.)
I'm pretty sure he retired so that he could escape these shiny black menaces.
I personally have had to duck and run out of the way of these maniac birds on a number of occasions, particularly around the Capitol (coincedence?)
They literally stand on the benches, wait for you to walk by, and then fly right at your head. I've been hit twice and dodged many more.
I haven't been attacked by sparrows or pigeons, though, so whatever's ailing the downtown Austin avian population is presumably separate from whatever it is that make the grackles go all Alfred Hitchcock on us on a regular basis.