Thunderbirds Of Arizona

BlastTyrant

Senior Member
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2,585
BlastTyrant the third link I put up in the orignal post tells the story you are talking about heres a short clip from it...

Other modern sightings of what may have been thunderbirds have also occured. In 1977, three boys were playing in a residential neighborhood in Illinois. They reported that two large birds chased after the boys. While two were unharmed, one of the boys was attacked and suffered somewhat serious injuries. He was carried several feet, a few feet off the ground, before the bird dropped him and disappeared into the wilderness
Ah ok sorry can't look to much into it when im suppose to be working :LOL:
 

kcwildman

Beastmaster
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3,042
its all good bro;) didn't know if ya had a chance to read the links. this is a puzzling thing to me to think these bigass birds are still around
 

BlastTyrant

Senior Member
Messages
2,585
Well for me it falls under the concept of Bigfoot and such, people always complain "no corpse no proof" well it has been proven that in the wild a corpse dosent last longer than a few weeks at most. your more likely to see a 20 live deer in the woods before you see 1 dead one or even the remains of a dead one. I like everything crypto
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
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5,049
Great Thunderbird’s of the Southwest

Sightings of a giant bird, as recent as 2008, have been part of the history of the Southwest for thousands of years. The Native American peoples have always referred to this giant creature as the Thunderbird, a magical animal sent by their gods to protect them from the powers of evil. Riding on the wings of the storm, the Thunderbird embodied the power of the storm. Its eyes flashed fire, its cry was like the crack of lightning, and its mighty wings beat with the sound of rolling thunder, ever protecting its people from the powers of evil.

Petroglyphs (rock art) created by Native American artists all over the Southwest, capture the Thunderbird’s image, sometimes in immense scale. For example, in Grand Valley of Colorado, just below the edge of the Grand Mesa above the town of Palisade, there is a natural light colored cliff in the trees that has the shape of the great Thunderbird (whether natural or carved by the hand of man, who can say). Below this, even more rarely seen, is a slender, serpent like chute that flows down the side of the mesa.

According to local Ute Indian legend, great Thunderbirds ruled the skies and lived atop the Grand Mesa. One day they stole some children from the Ute village. Outraged, the warriors climbed to the top of the mesa to rescue the children. Sadly, they found that the children had been eaten. In retribution, the warriors threw the Thunderbird eggs into the valley below. When the Thunderbirds returned and found their nests empty, they looked down and found their eggs had been devoured by the great serpent [probably a reference to the snake-like shape of the Colorado River that can be seen from atop the mesa]. The birds swooped down and snatched up the snake and flew with it high over the mesa. Amidst a raging storm, the birds ripped the serpent to pieces and threw the electrified pieces all across the mesa, which created the huge scar on the landscape. The Thunderbirds wept for their young and their tears filled the gouges, thus forming the dozens of lakes that today dot the top of the Mesa. Even today, when the wind blows from a certain direction, people say you can hear the wail of the Thunderbirds as their mourn their lost young.

Scientists feel fairly confident that the ancient Native Americans really did see a large bird called a Giant Condor. It lived over 10,000 years ago, and it is possible that stories of this giant bird have passed down from generation to generation. Could Giant Condors still exists? It is certainly possible, since many areas of the Southwest remain extremely remote and almost completely unexplored.

This does not, however, explain the 1890 encounter. In April of 1890, two cowboys supposedly killed one of these great birds in Arizona and dragged it to town. Legend says it had featherless wings and a face like an alligator. In a story that appeared in the Tombstone Epitaph on April 26, 1890, the creature’s wingspan was 160 feet, the body was 92 feet long and 50 inches around the middle, and the head was eight feet long. Curiously, one wonders how the cowboys managed to drag this gigantic carcass to town with nothing but their two horses. Sounds like a tall tale, especially since the photograph that was supposedly taken at the time is missing.

It is interesting that reports of giant raptor-like bird continue in modern times. Sightings have taken place from Texas to New Mexico and into parts of Arizona. In 1972, in Maxwell, New Mexico, a witness reported seeing what he thought was a pterodactyl flying out of an arroyo.
Could these cowboys and modern day witness have killed or seen a species of dinosaur; an animal long thought extinct, like a pterodactyl, perhaps. Fossilized pterodactyls with a wingspan of 23 feet have been found, and it is estimated that some of them may have attained a wingspan of 40 feet or more! That would explain the alligator head and featherless wings of the 1890 creature. Since humans are still exploring our world, and we are discovering new species every day, especially in our oceans, we won’t rule out the possibility.

In more recent times (as recent as 2008), sightings of a bird, all black with stooped shoulders, and much larger than a human, have been seen from the Rio Grande Valley to the mountains of New Mexico. One man saw two birds sitting on a ledge in the Dona Ana Mountains near Las Cruces, New Mexico. The story says that the birds were so huge they looked like small planes. When one leaped from the ledge and soared down the face of the mountain, the witness swears it had a wingspan of 20 feet and pink-bald head and all-black feathered body. He’d never seen anything like it in his 30 years of experience hiking and fossil hunting in the area. So what are people seeing?

California Condors have been successfully reintroduced to the Grand Canyon. California Condors are large, black vultures with patches of white on the underside of the wings and stooped shoulders. They have a bald head with skin color ranging from yellow to red, depending on the bird’s mood. Condors have a wingspan on 9.5 feet and can weigh up to 20 pounds. It is possible that the creatures, from time to time, follow the Mogollon Rim and mountain chains into New Mexico and Texas in search of food. Or there may be pockets of native condors left in the remote regions of New Mexico.

Yet another possibility is the Andean Condor. Native to Argentina, Chili, Bolivia, Columbia, Peru and Ecuador, Andean Condors have roughly the same appearance as California Condors and are about the same size, with a wingspan slightly longer at 10 feet and body weight up to 30 pounds. Is it possible that some of the birds fly north through Mexico to the southwestern United States in search of new territory? Again, we won’t rule out the possibility.

No matter what the Thunderbird was or is, its story has become firmly fixed in the legends of the Southwest. When you hear the roll of thunder and watch lightning stab to the earth, remember that somewhere up in the clouds may be the giant bird of legend.

He is the Great One Eyed Bird Who Rides on the Clouds of the Storm Whose Voice is Thunder and a Glance of his Eye is Lightning. He is the Great Winged Power From the Place Where the Sun Goes Down.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
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5,049
Thunderbird (cryptozoology)

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A Northwest Coast styled Kwakwaka'wakw totem pole depicting a Thunderbird perched on the top. To Kwakwaka'wakw, different Thunderbirds are ancestors, whom they descend from.

Thunderbird is a term used in cryptozoology to describe large, bird-like creatures, generally identified with the Thunderbird of Native American tradition. Similar cryptids reported in the Old World are often called Rocs. Thunderbirds are regarded by a small number of researchers as having lizard features like the extinct pterosaurs such as Pteranodon. Reports of Thunderbird sightings go back centuries,[1] and the fossil record does show that giant birds (teratorns) with wingspans between 12 and 18 ft (3.7 and 5.5 m) were likely contemporary with early man. Today the creature is generally regarded as a myth.

This article deals with modern sightings (the last 200 years) of such a creature, reported as real, as opposed to mythological accounts, though believers in the phenomenon often use the Native American legends in attempts to support their claims.
Contents
Early reports

There is a story that in April 1890, two cowboys in Arizona killed a giant birdlike creature with an enormous wingspan. It was said to have had smooth skin, featherless wings like a bat and a face that resembled an alligator. This description has some similarity to that of a prehistoric pterodactyl, an animal whose existence was known at the time. They are supposed to have dragged the carcass back to town, where it was pinned with wings outstretched across the entire length of a barn. A picture of this event may have been published in the local newspaper, the Tombstone Epitaph. Cryptozoology.com has an account of this story with the events taking place in the state of Texas.[2]

According to Mark Hall, the Epitaph did indeed print a story about the capture of a large, unusual winged creature, on April 26, 1890. Beyond this single story, however, no one has made historic corroboration that this event ever occurred; it is usually considered an urban legend. Utterly fictional tall tales were not an uncommon feature in newspapers during this era.[3]

No one has ever produced a copy of the "Thunderbird" photograph, though numerous people, Ivan T. Sanderson being one of the better known, have made claims to its existence. Sanderson claimed to have once owned a copy of the photo, which vanished after he loaned it to an acquaintance in the 1960s. The television program Freaky Links staged a similar photo, giving new life to the "Thunderbird Photograph" legend.[4]

Jerome Clark speculates that the description of the basic image in question (men standing alongside a winged creature nailed to a barn), is evocative enough to implant a sort of false memory, leading some people to vaguely "remember" seeing the photo at some distant, imprecise time.[5]


20th century

Bigfoot researcher and cryptozoology author Loren Coleman wrote about a series of thunderbird sightings in the 1940s. On April 10, 1948, three individuals in Overland, Illinois spotted what they originally thought to be a passing plane, but after seeing a large set of flapping wings, they realized this "plane" was something very different. A few weeks later, in Alton, Illinois, a man and his son saw what they described as an enormous bird creature with a body shaped like a naval torpedo. The creature was flying at at least 500 feet and cast a shadow the same size as a small passenger airplane.[6]

Similar sightings around the same time in St. Louis, Missouri prompted residents to write concerned letters to then St. Louis mayor Aloys P. Kaufmann demanding that the city do something about these reportedly huge birds. The mayor instructed an administrative assistant to set a trap to catch one of the creatures, but when blue heron tracks were discovered on an island in the Meramec River, the mystery was considered solved.[7]

There was a spike in Thunderbird sightings in the late twentieth century. On occasion, such reports were accompanied by large footprints or other purported evidence.

Among the most controversial reports is a July 25, 1977 account from Lawndale, Illinois. About 9 P.M. a group of three boys were at play in a residential back yard. Two large birds approached, and chased the boys. Two escaped unharmed, but the third boy, ten-year-old Marlon Lowe, did not. One of the birds reportedly clamped his shoulder with its claws, then lifted Lowe about two feet off the ground, carrying him some distance. Lowe fought against the bird, which released him.

Viewed by some as a tall tale, the descriptions given by the witnesses of these birds match that of an Andean condor: a large black bird, with a white ringed neck and a wingspan up to 10 feet (3 m).[8] However, an Andean condor's talons are not strong enough to lift heavy objects.[citation needed] Loren Coleman and his brother Jerry interviewed several witnesses after the reported event.


21st century

In 2002, a sighting of a large birdlike creature, with a wingspan of around 14 feet (4.3 m), was reported in Alaska.[9] The Anchorage Daily News reported witnesses describing the creature like something out of the movie Jurassic Park. Scientists suggested the giant bird may have simply been a Steller's sea eagle, which have a wingspan of 6–8 feet (1.8–2.4 m).There had also been previous reports of similar creatures in the same area around that time.

As recently as 2007, sightings have been claimed in the area around San Antonio, Texas.
 

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