As tourists traverse Noosa’s famed shopping strip, they are blissfully unaware they are being watched.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A seriously cranky crow is on patrol along Hastings Street, flitting from rooftops to treetops as it fiercely guards its territory at Queensland’s holiday hotspot.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The crow on patrol along Hastings Street.\u00a0 (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jessica Ross)<\/p>\n
“It is aggressive and pretty scary \u2014 it just chases you,” Linda Harvey said.<\/p>\n
Ms Harvey, who has lived in Noosa for 23 years, endured her first aerial attack last spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s swooped up from behind me, hit my head a couple of times with its claws, gave me a massive headache,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t have any blood or anything, but it’s a really hard thump on the head and it did it a couple of times.”<\/p>\n
She figured it was a once-off until it struck again this year.<\/p>\n
“I go there regularly because I take my dog to the woods … it kept swooping me to the point where an outdoor cafe area, I had to hide under their canopy,” Ms Harvey said.<\/p>\n
“A couple of the waiters came out and had a water bottle and sprayed it until it flew away.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ms Harvey, with her dog Hugo, near the spot where she was attacked. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jessica Ross)<\/p>\n
Julie Perrie has also fallen foul of the feathered foe while walking her dog through the area.<\/p>\n
“It was actually swooping my head and then people were yelling, ‘Quick, it’s coming again,'” Ms Perrie said.<\/p>\n
“By the time I got in the car I had to sit and actually compose myself.<\/p>\n
“Have you ever seen the movie The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock? It was like that.”<\/p>\n
In Alfred Hitchcock’s acclaimed 1963 thriller The Birds, crows and ravens attack people.\u00a0 (Supplied.)<\/p>\n
Crow attacks ‘unusual’<\/p>\n
Michelle Duggan works at a hat shop along Hastings Street.<\/p>\n
She said the swooping was a daily occurrence and the crow appeared to target people with dogs.<\/p>\n
“Even dogs that are in a car, I’ve seen it actually fly down to a car and try and have a go there,” Ms Duggan said.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty strange and people are quite frightened by him too.”<\/p>\n
Hastings Street workers Yuliia Ipatenko (left) and Michelle Duggan have been warning visitors about the crow. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jessica Ross)<\/p>\n
Christina Zdenek, from conservation charity BirdLife Australia, said the bird most likely had a bad experience with a dog.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dr Zdenek said the crow was being a ‘good parent’. (Supplied: BirdLife Australia)<\/p>\n
“Perhaps chasing after the bird, maybe injuring it and it’s really remembered that particular event and it’s reacting accordingly,” Dr Zdenek said.<\/p>\n
“The usual swooping offenders are indeed the masked lapwings [plovers] and the magpie so it is a little bit more unusual for it to be a crow but not completely unheard of.<\/p>\n
“They’re very likely to be protecting their nest so either eggs or young inside the nest at that very vulnerable time.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A magpie swooping a young cyclist. (ABC Open contributor Dee Hartin)<\/p>\n
She said it was possible the crow was copying from other birds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Being highly intelligent I would not put it past them to learn a behaviour from even another species but there’s really no way to directly test that,” she said.<\/p>\n
Noosa Council has now installed temporary warning signs.<\/p>\n
A council spokesperson said native birds are protected and it is illegal to harm or interfere with their nests and eggs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Noosa Council has erected temporary signs to warn visitors. (ABC Sunshine Coast: Jessica Ross)<\/p>\n
Visitors have been encouraged to take an alternative route if possible, walk quickly through the area and wear a hat and sunglasses to protect themselves.<\/p>\n
“Give them space and recognise and have some empathy that the animal is probably trying to just be a really good parent and protect its young,” Dr Zdenek said.<\/p>\n
“It will pass and then they’ll be back to being normally behaving crows”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As tourists traverse Noosa’s famed shopping strip, they are blissfully unaware they are being watched.\u00a0 A seriously cranky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[142654,64,63,142655,142652,142649,6092,142648,142653,128,142650,142651,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-238363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-attacking-birds","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-bird-attack","12":"tag-bird-behaviour","13":"tag-birdlife-australia","14":"tag-crows","15":"tag-hastings-street","16":"tag-noosa-heads","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-swooping","19":"tag-swooping-crows","20":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}