First fort in half a decade. Yesterday I discovered the joy of the new trees combined with Giant Keas.
The dorf caravan arrived at the same time as the birds, so I figured, I'd just let the caravan guards take care of the buggers. The depot is still outside, so all the action wasn't threatening the proper fort. As the interrupt spam didn't cease, I observed the goings on for a bit. No marksdorfs among the caravan guards... Still considered the giant flying buggers more a nuisance than a threat, but then a horse died. Looked around outside and noticed a number of dorfs are stuck in trees. Were the flying giant buggers picking the dorfs up and dropping them in trees? Also found a dead miner. It was time to do something about the buggers.
Luckily, I'd just set up my military and had three marksdorfs, who I proceeded to send outside to fire wooden stakes at the giant flying buggers, resulting in a great lack of flying toothpicks. Apparently, there weren't any quivers. After getting the quivers sorted out, the toothpick launchers managed to keep the giant flying buggers at bay. Didn't kill any, but kept them at a distance. Also noticed that the toothpick launchers climbed trees while hunting, so the tree-hugging dorfs must have gotten there themselves, and would hopefully also get down by themselves, like the marksdorfs kept doing. (No, didn't happen. Assigning them all to a squad and ordering them to move didn't help either. Had to build stairs, but this wasn't unexpected knowing dorfs.)
After the flying giant buggers had buggered off, I studied the combat reports to find out that the dead horse hadn't been fighting, but died due to impact (perhaps it too had fled the giant flying buggers by climbing a tree and, once in the safety of the canopy, it had figured out the error in its logic, and that it's a horse and cant climb trees, and promptly fell down), and the dead miner had been fighting a giant louse, which he probably ran into while fleeing the giant flying buggers. Judging from the giant louse being named, it must have killed the dorf after all the wrestling, but the combat reports were inconclusive.
After things were running smoothly again, a second pack of giant flying buggers decided to pop in to celebrate the beginning of a new season. Oh Joy! There were only four of them this time, and only about five dorfs got stuck in trees. When the marksdorfs finally managed to kill the last one, a giant rattlesnake popped in from the same corner of the map the final flying giant bugger had been killed in. It promptly started to play with one of the marksdorfs, which I didn't immediately notice. The other marksdorfs were standing a little distance away behind a tree, so they didn't see what was going on. After a quick hint of standing on the other side of the tree, they promptly turned the snake into a toothpick-cushion. Once the snake kicked the bucket, a Panda decided to enter the map from the same corner, only to get promptly turned into a toothpick-cushion as well. At least most of my doctor's skills are no longer rusty.
Oh! And the hippies brought a grizzly bear the following spring. Hopefully they understand to bring a mate to it next year.
Next, I think I'll get rid of all the trees within toothpicking distance of my entrance and build a nice big tower for my three marksdorfs to fire from. I'll also need to make some traps to capture some of the flying giant buggers. Wouldn't mind finding some other ores than sphalerite either, as there isn't even any goblinite in the world to turn into useful metals...