Environment
When Crows Attack
One man is on a mission to map bird-on-human aggression around the world.
There’s a reason Jim O’Leary goes outside wearing a hat. That reason was demonstrated last month in Vancouver when he was walking to work and heard a screech, then felt something suddenly swoop over his shoulder.
It was a marauding crow. “Invariably, they attack you from the back and hit your head,” says O’Leary, a GIS instructor at Vancouver’s Langara College. “If you’ve got a hat on it’s a different story. But it’s still kind of terrifying—there’s a SQUAWK! and this bird goes right by you.”