Magpie attack leaves Rockhampton girl blind in one eye.

A seven-year-old girl has been left blind in one eye after a magpie attack in central Queensland.

The incident happened when Imogen Liddell and her mother Jodi were on a bike ride in North Rockhampton last month.

“We were riding along having a great afternoon, and all of a sudden I saw a magpie sort of coming from behind,” Ms Liddell said.

“I thought it was going to go past, and it veered abruptly around in front of her face and pecked her in the eye.”

Mrs Liddell said she instantly knew something was wrong.

“She had a severe injury that could be seen straight away, she had a lot of blood coming out.”

“Imogen was extremely distressed, and we called an ambulance.

“It was then we identified that it was a penetrating eye injury and it was pretty serious,” she said.

Imogen was rushed to the Rockhampton Base Hospital and immediately flown to the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane for surgery.

Most of her iris was removed, and her lens and lens sack was badly damaged.

The injury means weekly trips to see and eye specialist in Brisbane.

“At the moment her vision is negligible, she can tell if someone turns a torch on or off when it’s shining directly at her eye,” Ms Liddell said.

‘Nobody could have known’

She wants her daughter’s story to serve as a warning for others in magpie season.

“Our situation is was the perfect example of nobody could have known that it could have occurred that day,” she Liddell said.

“If she’d been wearing glasses that day, this would be a complete non-event.

“We’re really going to spend a lot of time in the future encouraging children to wear glasses,” she said.

Imogen’s doctors hope that with further treatment, she might regain some sight in her eye.

She has recently returned to school, after five weeks away.

The seven-year-old now wears special glasses or an eye shield over the injury.

In a similar incident, an eight-year-old boy in Gladstone, about 110 kilometres south-east of Rockhampton, also suffered eye injuries requiring surgery in a recent magpie attack.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.

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