What's the word for (some) birds -- malicious?!1 (or self-protective)
Just now, nothing new but hadn't witnessed it in years, saw an intra-species alliance of crows and mockingbirds performing war aggression on a tuxedo cat crossing the street.
The cat attempted to keep some dignity strolling, but when the dive-beaking hit the mark on the rump, those little hip jumps were just reflexive.
Years ago I saw a squirrel on a branch overhanging a sidewalk and a (bluejay?) saw me approaching way UNDER the branch, nowhere near that I would be any kind of threat, but apparently the bird found it rich that I might be used as a pawn in this strategy: It started pecking and swooping at the squirrel, more frenzied the closer I got, until the squirrel fell off the branch about six feet in front of me. It had an instant of deer-headlights looking at me before racing away. The bird got some kind of jollies over this, not really happy jollies, probably something more like bloodlust jollies?
Well, everybody's out there protecting their turf and babies and fueling ages-old HATFIELD-McCoy feuds.
