A photo might help people answer that. In the meantime, recall that panicky growers can kill a plant just as easily as pests and disease.

No sure how good your sense of smell but when honey bees sting it smells like a banana smell (Stung in bottom of foot recently). The smell informs other hb's to be on guard & to attack if necessary & locates the subject. HB's partly communicate by using scents or pheremones & our perfumes & man made scents can set em off. Lemon scents can signal queen/home or smell of beehive, thats why some keepers use lemongrass oil to attract/lure bees to traphives. AHB's these don't sound like as they attack in numbers greater & can chase for quite some distance so I've been told. Google images has picture library to look through to help identify the possible bee or wasp or hornet's that these could be. Good previous advise on use of no laundry scents & nonuse of fragrant personal hygiene products or perfumes & eating bananas is good to leave for another day, after tree hunting. Also color of clothing & vigorous motion might of been issue if you were solely wearing darker colors that bees mistake for bears or wild animals trying to rob hive. Lighter colors & calmer movements seem to not agravate so much. Cheers, David

I agree with Elly and those of the Bird Forum, a Red-shouldered Hawk, adult. Luc

FWIW, like Dave suggests, as long as the plants don't lose more than 1/3 of total foliage, they'll likely be ok. That damage looks healed over already & I don't see any holes in the new growth. That said, it may be cutworm or another similar caterpillar - they hide during the day. Cutworms burrow into loose soil/mulch around the base of plants & 'sleep' during the day. Bt can be used against caterpillars, but handpicking is often enough to control them in my garden. You can use iron phosphate bait for slugs & snails - it's pretty safe & degrades into fertilizer. I sprinkle the pellets around my tender new seedlings & transplants.