Magpie blinds boy in one eye

Four-year-old Seth McInnes has been left blind in one eye after a vicious magpie attack in a Toowoomba park.

His distraught father Chris McInnes told The Toowoomba Chronicle yesterday Seth was riding his bicycle near the playground in the West Creek Reserve on Sunday about 4pm when the magpie swooped.

“He was riding his bike back towards me and I saw it [the magpie] coming down really fast,” said Mr McInnes who started running towards his son as the bird swooped then hovered near Seth’s face.

“His screams didn’t shoo it away, it was only when I got over there it left. He had a little scratch over his eye. But when I looked in his eye it was full of blood.”

Seth was rushed to Toowoomba Hospital where Mr McInnes was informed Seth would probably lose all vision in his left eye before the four-year-old was taken to Mater Children’s Hospital in Brisbane for emergency surgery, which left him with four stitches in his eyeball.

Queensland councils must enlist a licensed operator to relocate problem magpies, but this is subject to approval from the Department of Environmental Resource Management.

Earlier this month, the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Services ordered a troublesome magpie be destroyed after it terrorised a young girl at Tweed Heads, about 100km south of Brisbane.

However, the bird was granted a stay of execution as a result of community concern and outrage.

Tweed Inspector Greg Jago said police had refused to shoot the bird amid safety concerns “about using a firearm in an area that is populated by human beings’’.

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