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We lived in Traralgon, Victoria. The bird attacks weren't constant throughout the year or anything. They happened for a short period of time, during the birds' nesting season. I used to take a five minute walk four times a day, to the bus stop and back again, and that's when it was a problem. One day, my kids and I got off the bus and started walking home, and we noticed a magpie sitting on the telephone wire, staring at us. Knowing that it wanted to attack, my daughter and I took off running and managed to get to the end of the street without it attacking us. But my son was afraid and stayed where he was. My daughter and I began yelling at him, "Run, Will, run!" He hesitated a little, fear on his poor little face, and then finally screwed his courage up and took off running. Sure enough, the bird swooped down and pecked him on the head. It was like something out of the movie "The Birds."

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They also attacked me a couple of other times when I was by myself walking from the bus stop. And my daughter told me that one attacked a girl during recess at her school so badly that the girl was sent home. There were hats made and sold to prevent the attacks. They were like a baseball cap, except that they had a flap hanging down the back, which had a face sewn onto it. This would prevent an attack, in that the bird would think it was a real human face, and be fooled into thinking that the human was facing it, and the birds never attacked from the front, only from behind when they couldn't see your face.

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I read that it's only a minority of magpies that attack, and it's almost always males. It may have been just one particular bird who hung out at that area who was attacking us, and as I said, it happened for just a short period of time.