Hawks are God's Gunslingers

[Michael]

Raptors will sometimes dive bomb men's heads. I don't know why.

Funny thing I saw one day were a couple of small, yellow swallow-tails torturing a cat by dive-bombing and pulling up just out of its reach, each alternating from different sides for a few minutes. They were obviously just having fun.

[Dmitri]

They were obviously just having fun.

...or protecting their nest/young?


Re. falcons -- man, that sure is one of the gutsiest predator out there, going one-on-one against another predator, that also happens to be actually bigger and having a lot more teeth...
The only other similar one I can think of is mongoose attacking a snake...

[Michael]

Could have been. I didn't see except for the dive-bombing. Maybe the kitty-kat instigated or was in the vicinity of a nest,, but the birds did return to a perch on a power pole nowhere near a nest immediately after.

[Steve James]

Ground nesting birds are the ones that usually dive bomb intruders.