Customers at a Pacific Palisades yogurt store have been the targets of real angry birds.
But unlike the boisterous pig-seeking missile birds who show no regard for self-preservation in the video game, these birds are feathered Stealth bombers. They silently wait, dip in for the attack, then swoop back to safety before the passer-by knows what happened.
"They don't make any noise," said Yogurt Shoppe owner Kevin Sabin. "They look like these sweet little birds."
Sabin said the birds seem attracted to hats -- no particular style ruffles their feathers more than any other. He was wearing an orange cap when a bird launched an unprovoked aerial assault on his head.
"The birds do a nose dive at people as they pass," Sabin said. "It happened to me for first time last week. Something attacked my head, and I thought it was a bat and just shooed it away."
"I didn't know what was happening, and then you look and you see this black thing flying around your head," says Sara Singsank, who was attacked by the birds.
"They're kind of cowards. They come from behind," says Kevin Loric, another bird victim.
Video from Sabin's iPhone shows two birds swooping and diving at pedestrians as they walk outside the store. The birds' nest is just outside the store in the 800 block of Swarthmore Avenue.
"It's been going on for about two weeks, and I'm sure there's a reason," Sabin said. "There's a birds's nest in the bushes, but to someone who doesn't know that it's like, 'What's going on.'"
School children are often targeted after classes are out. One child posted a sign that reads, "Angry Birds."
The LA Audubon chapter said the birds appear to be Brewer's blackbirds, which are common in urban areas.
No bird-related injuries have been reported.
