Small birds protecting nests harass NLV City Hall visitors

It's enough to make a girl feel like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock's "The Birds."

But instead of a seaside resort, the horror unfolds each spring on the steps of North Las Vegas City Hall.

There, small birds have taken to dive-bombing unsuspecting visitors -- mainly women -- on their way to and from the building.

They swoop down from the tall trees near City Hall's main entrance, briefly flap their wings and tangle their claws in people's hair. Then, just as suddenly, the winged attackers fly away.

"It's scary," said Mayor Shari Buck, who twice has been tagged by the birds in recent years. "I thought a whole colony of birds was coming to peck my eyeballs out. Their little claws hurt your head."

Though no one has been injured, the dive-bombings have become such a problem that the city has posted a large "CAUTION" sign near the entrance. It includes a graphic of a cheerful-looking couple fleeing from a descending bird.

"I think it was clip art , maybe from Halloween," Michelle Bailey-Hedgepeth, assistant to the city manager, said of the graphic.

Bailey-Hedgepeth said she first noticed the attacks a few years ago. Back then the birds hung out at the employees' entrance at the rear of the building. They seem to "like hair" and target women, she said.

"I used to sit in my car and watch them attack someone, wait until they were busy with someone else, before I'd run in," Bailey-Hedgepeth said. "I'm no fool."

The birds -- mockingbirds, it turns out -- are defending their nests by warning people to stay away, said Dale Smock, the city's animal control manager.

"They become very territorial," he said. "They usually go away when their babies are big enough."

The mockingbirds stand 9 or 10 inches high, Smock said, are gray "above the wings" and have wedge-shaped tails with a brownish cast.

"They are much slenderer and quicker than pigeons," he said.

Smock wasn't sure why the birds prefer to attack women. And he prefers the term "tease" instead of "attack" or "dive-bomb."

"I used to get complaint calls almost daily" about the birds, he said. "The women were getting teased big-time. Now everybody's used to it. They carry an umbrella."

The birds "tease" people from mid-April to late June, Smock said. The attacks vary in intensity.

"The first time, he -- or she -- really flapped for a while," Buck said. "The second time, he just sort of put his little claws in my hair for a minute."

Animal control tried moving the birds' nests a couple of times, but it didn't work, Smock said. And like other migratory birds, the mockingbirds are federally protected and can't be exterminated.

Not that anyone is advocating that.

"I wouldn't want any harm to come to the birds," Buck said. "I just carry a folder now to shoo them away."

Contact reporter Lynnette Curtis at
lcurtis@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0285.