Baby boy attacked by vulture in safari park

Six-month-old Cruz Conway was attacked by a vulture on a family trip to Knowsley Safari Park in Merseyside recently.

Sherina and Phil Conway were walking with their four-year-old son Zak and pushing Cruz in his buggy when four vultures started circling overhead.

The birds started getting closer and closer, when suddenly one the vulture dived at the family.

“The vulture flew over our heads and we all ducked,” shaken dad, Phil recalled, “and then I turned around and saw it on Cruz’s head, scraping at him.”

“Its claws were all over his head and he was crying hysterically.  I panicked and had to strike the bird to get it away,” he said.

Luckily Cruz was properly strapped in to the buggy, otherwise his parents fear he would have been carried off.

“I was really concerned because staff had just been saying how the vultures often pick up fox carcasses,” Phil explained.

“Cruz weighs less than 20lbs, so it’s a good job he was strapped him in or the vulture could have picked him up.”

The baby was given first aid by park staff, before being taken to hospital. Luckily he didn’t suffer more that cuts and bruises to his head.

“They cleaned the wound and told us to keep an eye on his sleeping pattern to make sure he was OK,” Sherina said.

“They said they’d never seen anything like it and said he was lucky he wasn’t blinded.”

Cruz’s older brother, Zak has been badly affected by the incident. “He loves animals and wanted to be a zoo keeper before this happened,” his dad said about his four-year-old son.

“The night after, he woke up screaming, saying ‘The bird was going to take him away’.”

A spokesman for Knowsley Safari Park said that this is the first time anything like this has happened. They are however changing the rules for young children in the park to make sure it can’t happen again.