AN Australian family is mourning the loss of a 5-month-old girl who died after her mother tried to protect her from a swooping magpie. Baby Mia was in her mother’s arms when a magpie swooped at them in Brisbane’s Glindemann Park on Aug. 8, causing her mother to trip and fall. Mia was rushed to hospital but later died from injuries sustained in the fall, according to the Queensland Ambulance Service. Relatives have launched a fundraising campaign to raise money to help cover Mia’s funeral costs and to assist her parents, identified only by their first names Jacob and Simone. In a social media post Tuesday, Brisbane’s Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner described the city as being “shocked to its absolute core” by the infant’s death. Magpies are known for aggressively defending their nests, particularly during breeding season which runs July-December in Brisbane. That aggression has earned magpies a fearsome reputation in Australia, where the sharp-beaked black-and-white bird grows to 40 centimeters long. The community-run Magpie Alert website logged 1,231 magpie swoops in the state of Queensland in 2020, with thousands more reported across the rest of Australia. More than one in 10 people swooped by magpies suffer injuries, according to Magpie Alert. In 2019 a 76-year-old Sydney man died of head injuries after crashing his bicycle while attempting to avoid a swooping magpie. The previous year, a child in Perth was almost blinded when a magpie attacked his face as he sat in his pram. Brisbane City Council says it is “working towards a natural balance as the guiding management principle,” when it comes to aggressive birds such as the native magpie. Magpies are a protected species in Australia, where it is illegal to kill the bird or remove its chicks or eggs from the wild. (SD-Agencies) | 