Old Town bird base defense

I was running today around Old Town San Diego (it's cool) when I saw the only other runner I had seen that morning. I thought he may know where he was going, so I followed him.

Then I saw him bending over and bringing his hands to his head, and then a bird came out of his head!  He seemed to have been attacked.  Weird.  So I kept running looking at the scenery and next I know, when I got to that same spot, a bird started attacking my head/hair!  It was like a head massage.  So I ran through there a couple more times, but I got the bird to attack me only once more and couldn't snap an action shot...