Magpie attack leaves girl, 12, fighting to save her sight

A 12-year-old West Australian schoolgirl has been left with a devastating eye injury after being swooped by a magpie on her way home from school – an accident that will now see her face up to 18 months of surgeries.

Leschenault mom Nicole Baldwin said her daughter Sam had just finished school and was walking across an oval in the town of Australind to meet her brother when the bird suddenly struck.

“It was just a routine afternoon,” Baldwin told news.com.au. “She called me about five minutes before I got there and said, ‘Mum, I’ve been swooped, it’s got me in the eye’. She was crying and pretty upset.”

Baldwin told Sam to stay with a family friend nearby until she arrived.

“When I got there, I could see straight away it was bad. It looked like there was a tear or a flap across her eye. I couldn’t tell how deep it went until we got to emergency,” Baldwin said.

Within an hour, Sam was rushed for emergency surgery at Busselton Hospital.

“The surgeon told me there was probably no chance of her getting any sight back in that eye,” Baldwin recalled.

“He said she’d need at least seven or eight surgeries over the next 15 to 18 months.”

But just days later, Sam’s condition worsened following the first procedure.

“Her lens started to swell because it had been hit by the bird’s beak,” Baldwin explained.

“We had to go straight to Perth Children’s Hospital for more surgery to remove it. Now we have to wait for the swelling to go down before they can even tell if the back of her eye has been damaged.”

Baldwin said the brave Year 7 student has kept in good spirits but doesn’t yet grasp how long her recovery will be.

“She’s doing pretty well emotionally, but I don’t think she quite understands how long this will go on, sadly. She’s in a lot of pain and really sensitive to light. She can’t take her eye patch off, and she doesn’t want to go outside at all.”

Sam has been unable to return to school, spending most of her days resting.

“She’s just happy to lie in bed and stay away from it all,” Baldwin said.

The single mom said the accident has completely upended the family’s life.

“It’s quite hard because I’m on my own with three kids, and I work full-time,” she said. “I’ve had to take leave without pay to be here with her, which is a big struggle financially. I’m two hours from home, paying for petrol, hospital stays, and medication. It all adds up very quickly.”

A close friend has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover the costs – something Baldwin said brought her to tears.

“It’s really hard to accept help,” she said. “I cried when I saw it. It’s a lifeline for us because I’m not getting paid right now.”

Baldwin, who’s always been cautious about magpies during swooping season, said she still can’t understand how the bird managed to strike her daughter so directly.

“I always tell the kids not to look up if they hear a bird’s wings close by – but Sam didn’t. She was looking down, and it still came straight for her with pure rage. It hit her front-on, right in the eye,” Baldwin said.

She hopes their story will make other parents more aware of the risks.

“Make your kids wear sunglasses, wear hats, walk in groups,” she urged. “Be vigilant and stay aware as best you can”.

Magpie swooping season typically runs from August to October, though it can extend to November in some areas, with experts saying there’s still a risk at the tail end.

According to Magpie Alert, a community website set up to track swooping magpies, there have been 4658 attacks this year, with 557 resulting in injuries.

Swooping incidents are concentrated in cities along the southeast coast, according to the website.

“We tend to see more magpies moving in areas with more people,” Dr. Meg Edwards, University of Southern Queensland wildlife science lecturer, told news.com.au.

“So you’re more likely to get swooped in cities because there are more birds and more people around.

“They’re just swooping anything that seems like a threat to them.

“If you’re in a more covered, densely bushy area, there’s a chance that you may not get swooped as often, whereas parks, footpaths and bike paths are more exposed.”

Edwards advised that staying away from areas where magpies live and nest during breeding season is the safest way to prevent a swooping attack.

“Education is key. For instance, having signs up in swooping areas is a really great move to educate people, and to let them know that they should potentially move on a little bit,” she said.

“Another key thing is maintaining habitat – so the less that we can destroy their habitat and destroy trees where they might be nesting and provide them more cover, the better.”

In addition to wearing sunglasses and a hat, Edwards said it’s crucial to remain calm while walking.

“The bigger and scarier we seem, the more threatening we can seem to magpies, and so they may be more likely to swoop,” Edwards said.