Why bird attacks on humans are becoming more common

A man in Australia has died in a bicycle accident while trying to escape from a swooping magpie, fuelling fears about the increasing rate of bird attacks on people worldwide.

The BBC reports that the 76-year-old cyclist “suffered head injuries on Sunday when he veered off a path and crashed into a park fence” in the seaside city of Wollongong, south of Sydney. He died later in hospital.

The broadcaster notes that swooping magpies are a “common threat in Australia during spring and often cause injuries to cyclists and pedestrians, but fatal incidents are rare”.

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Witnesses to this weekend’s attack claim that the bird involved is well-known among locals for its aggressive behaviour and has been dubbed “Swoop Dog” after US rapper Snoop Dogg, The Times reports.

Resident Jason Crosskey said: “It swoops quite a lot of people. It swooped a kid yesterday. For something like that to happen is pretty alarming actually.”

According to police, around eight similar attacks by birds have occurred in the Wollongong area in recent weeks. And the fatal incident comes just a fortnight after a Sydney council ordered the shooting of another Australian magpie after it “developed a loathing for cyclists and caused one man to suffer a heart attack”.

The Australian magpie is a different species to the magpies found in Europe and is known for extremely aggressive behaviour in spring, which falls between September and November down under.

However, The Independent reports that the number of bird attacks on people in the UK increasing too, with many birds of prey and seabirds adopting more aggressive tactics in order to defend their eggs and young against perceived threats.

Dr Steve Portugal, an ecophysiologist from Royal Holloway, University of London, told the newspaper that the great skuas species, in particular, “are renowned for dive-bombing anyone that gets too close to the nest, and colonies of Arctic terns will protect their babies by aggressively mobbing any intruders”.

He adds: “As available nest sites become harder to find due to habitat loss, it’s likely that these interactions between diligent bird parents and humans will increase.”

Andrea Jones, from the California chapter of environmental organisation National Audubon Society, told the BBC in July that bird attacks in the US are also increasing in frequency.

“The increase we’re seeing is because we’re encroaching on bird habitats. So there are more bird-human interactions,” she said.

However, Jones added: “As long as people respect their space, I don’t think there’s going to be an epidemic of bird attacks.”