Well I was searching for some dragons to hit in the face with my weapon and was exhilarated to find one within the first 10 min. if my quest. So the dragon flew around a bit and I was shouting at it and staying near it. (I wasn't keeping it from landing, I gave it space several time). But it eventually just flew away. It was definitely aware of my presence. WTF happened. Was I too awesome for it. Was I trolled by Bethesda? This happened to me again but this time it was fighting a giant and flew away and as I was running after it the giant pwned me into the stratosphere.
PS. This topic title was inspired by my sister scaring the crap out of me and screaming "Dragon go bye bye!" in my ear. Turns out she had been wathching

Bumpdada bumpdada bump bump bump....

As far as i've seen there are three types of random dragon encounters.
1. It targets you and comes at you
2. It flys around for a minute or two and unless you are really good at shotting them in the air they will eventually fly away, basicly they aren't bothered by you.
3. Same as 2 but it flys to roost somewhere you can reach if you're fast or targets something/someone else

I svck at bringing down the cruising ones...found one by rorickstead(don't remember spelling) saved and tried to bring him down and missed with everything but then he decided to attack the town so I ran there and helped. Accidently hit a guard and aggroed them all in the fight so i reloaded...tried again...missed again and it again flew off and attacked the town so i think it was 'decided' when he spawned that if i don't aggro him he'll go there.

Made the same topic about 20 minutes ago. Its happened to me twice now out of the 10 dragons I have encountered. I have shot arrows at it and used shouts. I know I've hit them, but after like a minute of flying around me they just go further away and vanish.

Well, I was just leaving ... the stormcloak town, about to do my first mission as a full member, and this Dragon just swoops down outa nowhere. Freezes the stables up, some horses decide it's a good idea to fight it and run at it, I charge and fu dos rah the thing in the face and procede to take its health down to 2/3 before it gets up, hovers in the air just above me, starts blasting me till I loose around 200hp, then runs for its life. Rather frustrating. I just kept following it round shooting it, but since my archery is like 16 or something I didn't do much. Damn dragons.