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Girl hit in the head by bird while on roller coaster

Bird appears to have got away unharmed 

Chelsea Ritschel
Tuesday 30 July 2019 17:19 BST
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10-year-old girl gets hit in the face by bird on roller coaster (Facebook)
10-year-old girl gets hit in the face by bird on roller coaster (Facebook)

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A 10-year-old girl riding a roller coaster travelling at up to 70mph received an unexpected scare when a bird flew into her head.

Paige Ormiston, from Australia, was enjoying a day at the Warner Bros Movie World amusement park in Queensland with her uncle when the incident occurred.

According to her mother Nicole, who shared video of the collision on Facebook, Paige and her uncle were riding in the front seat of the DC rival hyper coaster at the time - one of the tallest, longest, and fastest roller coasters in the southern hemisphere.

In the video, which has since been viewed more than 305,000 times, Paige can be seen enjoying the ride before she is overcome with terror as a large white bird flies towards her.

“Paige just got hit by an ibis bird while riding front seat on the DC rival hyper coaster with her uncle Mitch,” her mum wrote on Facebook.

Fortunately, the girl came out of the encounter shocked but relatively unscathed.

“She had feathers on her and a beak scratch on her right shoulder,” her mother said. “She’s completely shocked, a little bruised but okay. Not sure about the bird?”

Paige was riding in the front seat of the roller coaster (Facebook)
Paige was riding in the front seat of the roller coaster (Facebook)

According to Paige, the incident, which left her seat covered in feathers, was frightening because she didn’t know how to escape the collision.

“I was very scared,” she told 9News. “I didn’t know what to do because I was stuck in a chair.

“I saw it was white [but] I didn’t know what it was at first.”

However, most other people have found the video amusing, including Ormiston, who wrote on Facebook: "How can you not buy that video?"

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Following the encounter, the amusement park told 9News that this was the first time a rider had collided with a bird, and there have been no reports of injured birds.

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