The Thunderbird: Examining the Legend
Date: Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 (CST )
Topic: Animals & Cryptozoology
 Across the globe there are stories of giant birds often called Thunderbirds that we assume exist only in legend. Their presence has been faithfully recorded in the mythology of many cultures for thousands of years in the form of cave art, carvings, pottery and ancient stories.
Oddly enough, there are many people who believe that there is more to these stories than mere legends. Records of actual sightings of the strange ‘giant’ also span the world; often mirroring areas where the legend originates.
These sightings obviously fuel much debate in the world of cryptozoology, because they suggest that there is a previously undiscovered species of bird that has eluded science despite its immense size. Witnesses’ descriptions further complicate the issue because sightings fall into two distinct categories: giant feathered birds, or giant featherless creatures.
This
discrepancy has caused some researchers to question if the term
Thunderbird is mistakenly used to describe two completely unrelated
animals. Investigations into what these mysterious and elusive
creatures could be centers on two very different lines of thought: that
they are either an unknown species of bird, or a pterosaur (a type of
dinosaur that in theory died out several million years ago).
There is however a third
explanation that in many ways encompasses the other two; that these
creatures are an entirely supernatural phenomena. The biggest challenge
that faces researchers and investigators today is to understand what
kind of creature the Thunderbird is.
The Legend of the Thunderbird
 The Thunderbird’s name
originated from the belief that its massive wings were responsible for
creating thunder and lightening as it flew through the skies. Even in
America, the Thunderbird appears to have been called many different
names in different cultural traditions. The native people of modern-day
Illinois called it the Piasa while in New England some tribes knew it
as the Pmola.
The Thunderbird’s
reputation is as varied as its names; in the Pacific Northwest
Thunderbirds were seen as protectors and its image adorned canoes to
protect fishermen from whales. But tribes such as the Cherokee, who
called it Tlanuwa, feared the Thunderbird and claimed that it raided
the villages, carrying off small dogs and children.
Interestingly, the legends
of the Algonquin people of New England told how the giant birds rode
the wind currents from the southwest all the way up the eastern U.S. to
New England. Researchers have noted that this fits with many reported
modern day sightings, as the birds seem to follow the prevailing
weather systems which start in Mexico and flow to the northeast,
through the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys up into the Appalachian
Mountains. It comes as no surprise to hear that many modern sightings
are in the same places where many of the Thunderbird legends
originated.
Mistaken Identity
 In the past, many
investigators have suggested that what are reported as Thunderbird
sightings are actually condors, turkey buzzards or even large eagles.
These birds have wingspans of between six and ten feet depending on the
species, although this is considerably smaller than the thirty foot
wingspan attributed to the Thunderbird. Also, condors, the biggest of
the suspects, are not native to many areas where sightings have been
reported. Certainly though, some witnesses have stated specifically
that the bird they saw strongly resembled a condor, both in size and
outline although they are particularly rare today.
The famed ornithologist
John J. Audubon offered another candidate that might have been mistaken
for a thunderbird. Audubon described an unknown species of eagle in the
area of the Illinois and Ohio River valleys that he named Washington’s
eagle. This particular raptor species was said by Audubon to be over
three and a half feet in length with a wingspan exceeding ten feet.
Audubon only made five total sightings of this bird, although during
one he managed to shoot and examine a specimen. However, not all
biologists accept that Washington’s eagle is a separate species, and
suggest that Audubon was mistaking large golden eagles or even immature
bald eagles for this other bird.
Some of the modern reports
of unknown giant birds sound as though the witnesses could be
describing the type of bird that Audubon had seen, especially as some
sightings appeared in the area that the ornithologist described.
Modern sightings of giant birds
In Alton, Illinois, in 1947
there was a rash of sightings in which the witnesses described having
seen impossibly large birds. In early April of that year, a farmer
named Robert Price reported a ‘monster bird... bigger than an
airplane’, and on April 10th another was spotted, this time by Mr. and
Mrs. Clyde Smith and Mr. Les Bacon. In that sighting, the witnesses
thought they were looking at a small airplane until the bird flapped
its wings. The sightings that year continued until early May and then
stopped until 1977 when one was sighted again.
On July 25th 1977, several
residents from Lawndale, Illinois reported seeing two large birds of an
unknown species which attacked three boys playing in a yard. One of the
boys, ten year old Marlon Lowe, was seized by one of the talons of one
of the birds and witnessed claimed he was actually lifted about a foot
into the air. The boy weighed about 65 pounds at the time, so any bird
capable of lifting another animal of that weight would have been
enormous. One witness said the bird had a body the size of a large man
and had a white ring around its neck on an otherwise coal-black body.
Another witness, the boy’s mother, said the bird resembled a condor.
Fortunately the boy was able to struggle free, and was left with only
minor wounds.
This was not the only
report of these large birds from the area in that year; just a few days
after the above incident, a man and his wife watching model airplanes
fly over their farm reported seeing two birds with estimated ten-foot
wingspans. On July 30th in Bloomington, Illinois, a man who was
spending the day on a fishing boat with his son managed to film two
giant birds after they took flight, shooting about 100 feet of footage
of the birds. He estimated their wingspan as being over twelve feet.
When the film was shown to local Department of Conservation officials,
they stated the birds were merely large turkey vultures, which are
native to the area. However, other researchers and wildlife experts
disagreed, as turkey vultures do not grow to the size of the birds
reported by the many witnesses.
There were also several
sightings in June to September of 2001 in Pennsylvania. On June 13th, a
resident of Greenville, Pennsylvania reported seeing a huge dark grey
or black bird with a wingspan of 15 feet flying overhead. One of the
witnesses’ neighbors also came forward to say they had seen this huge
bird, which was observed for about fifteen minutes before flying away
to the south. What appears to be the same bird was seen in July, this
time in Erie County and again on September 25th, this time flying over
a highway and landing in a tree, where a dead branch nearly broke under
its weight. Again, the bird in this sighting had a wingspan of an
estimated ten to fifteen feet, and didn’t resemble any of the known
local birds.
Giants of the Past
 During the past, there were
other species of raptors in the skies over the Americas. In fact,
during the mega-fauna era of the Pleistocene, there were at least seven
species of eagle in North America. Although most died out when the
other large animals did, at least one survived into the period when,
even by the most conservative estimates, humans were colonizing the
Americas. This bird was Teratornis merriami, a bird of enormous
proportions who was still alive as recently as 8000 years ago. From the
fossil remains, we know it stood about five feet tall and had an
awe-inspiring twenty-four foot wingspan, something comparable in size
to a single-engine aircraft.
Because the remains of
Teratornis have been found alongside human artifacts, it is likely that
early residents of the North America not only knew of Teratornis but
might have hunted it, either as food or because it hunted humans.
Fossilized remains of the bird have led researchers to believe that
Teratornis was a predator and not merely a scavenger. Given that many
of the Thunderbird legends tell of these birds carrying away humans as
food it is possible that this amazing creature is actually the origin
for the Thunderbird legend.
Is it a Bird?
 Although it existed in the
legends of many cultures, at times it seems the stories are describing
vastly different animals. In some places the description clearly fits
that of a large bird, while in others it takes on distinct reptilian
characteristics.
Researchers have noted that
many of the descriptions of the Thunderbird, including images and
petroglyphs, have a more reptilian nature. They suggest that it is
possible that the Thunderbird isn’t a bird at all, but what could only
be described as a living fossil – a pterosaur.
Pterosaurs were a group of
flying reptiles that lived along the dinosaurs and died out at the end
of the Cretaceous Period. Pterosaurs ranged in size from the tiny
Pterodactylus elegans with a wingspan of just under 10 inches to the
mighty Quetzelcoatlus, with a wingspan of up to 40 feet. However, no
remains of pterosaurs have been found in the fossil record after the
so-called “K-T” boundary, which is the time in the geological record
when all dinosaur fossils cease to appear.
An early visitor to the
region of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, the French explorer
Jacques Marquette, reported seeing a painting of the Piasa bird painted
high on the face of a cliff. Marquette’s description of the painting
gives details that sound more reptilian than avian:
"On the flat face of a high
rock were painted, in red, black, and green, a pair of monsters, each
as large as a calf, with horns like a deer, red eyes, a beard like a
tiger, and a frightful expression of countenance. The face is something
like that of a man, the body covered with scales, and the tail so long
that it passes entirely round the body, over the head, and between the
legs, ending like that of a fish."
Unfortunately, today only a
reproduction of that painting remains as no one has been able to
pinpoint the exact location that Marquette’s described, leading
skeptics to suggest he may have lied about seeing this particular image.
As outlandish as it sounds,
many researchers have taken the possibility that there could still be
living pterosaurs very seriously. There have been recent expeditions to
Papua New Guinea to search for a flying creature the locals call the
‘Ropen’ which from descriptions, sounds like a living specimen of a
pterosaur called Rhamphorhyncus from the Late Jurassic period. There
are other places in the world where cryptozoologists believe that these
creatures may still exist; reports of pterosaur-like creatures such as
the Kongamoto of the African Congo region continue to intrigue many.
The Pterosaur Returns
 If sightings of feathered
giant birds are plentiful, it has to be said that so are sightings of
flying reptiles. In 1992, a small plane in Brazil reported a near
collision with what everyone claimed was a white pterosaur, which
supposedly flew next to the plane. This encounter occurred while a
twenty-four passenger plane was flying over a mountainous jungle
region. The plane’s flight attendant claimed the creature flew
alongside the plane enabling her to see it clearly through the windows,
but no estimated size for the creature was given.
Over the Yucatan peninsula
of Mexico, film was shot in the 1970s which reportedly showed a
pterosaur in flight. Although the footage appears to have been lost it
was mentioned in books on cryptozoology at the time.
In 1976, a policeman named
Arturo Padilla of San Benito, Texas was on patrol in his vehicle during
the early-morning hours when he spotted a huge shape in his headlights
which resembled a huge bird. Just a few moments later, another officer
in the same town saw the same large creature, which he described as
gliding along without flapping its wings. A short time after that
report, a man in Brownsville named Alverico Guajardo claimed that
around 9:30 in the evening a large creature he described as being ‘like
a bird, but not a bird’ crashed into his mobile home. Mr. Guajardo said
he witnessed the stunned creature standing in his yard after the crash,
and described it as huge and unlike anything he’d ever seen.
In January of 1976, a young
man in Raymondsville, Texas was reportedly attacked by a creature he
claimed stood six feet tall and had a wingspan he estimated at being at
least ten feet wide. Although not seriously injured, he was very shaken
by this encounter, and said the creature that attacked him had huge red
eyes and blackish-brown leathery skin, but no feathers.
In February of the same
year, three school teachers on their way to work at a local elementary
school were startled when they saw a huge creature with a wingspan of
at least twelve feet soar over their cars. After arriving at work and
researching what they had seen, they found a library book with a
similar creature in; according to the book, these three very reliable
and intelligent witnesses had seen a pterosaur.
A more recent sighting in
which the witnesses were convinced they’d seen a living pterosaur came
from Perth, Australia in 1997. A couple taking an evening walk observed
a creature flying some 300 feet above them, which had wings shaped like
an elongated triangle, reddish-tan leathery looking skin with no
visible feathers but possibly covered in scales, and a body shaped like
a torpedo. The couple watched the creature for several minutes, and
they claimed the creature glided without flapping its wings while they
watched it fly slowly off to the south along the coastline.
Supernatural Possibilities
Skeptics point out however
that there is no physical evidence to support claims that these
undiscovered birds or reptiles do actually exist. The most famous
‘photographs’ of pterosaurs allegedly taken during the American civil
war are known to have been faked by the media and other ‘big bird’
photographs remain disputed at best.
Rather than looking for a
creature that lives amongst us, it is possible that we may be looking
for a creature that is only visible when conditions are favorable.
Whether those conditions relate to a build up of psychic energy, times
where the veil that separates our dimension from other dimensions is
compromised, occasions when aspects of the past are somehow ‘replayed’,
is unknown. There is even the very real possibility that what we are
witnessing is off world in nature.
 There are strong
similarities between the phenomena known as the ‘Mothman’ and some
images and descriptions of the Thunderbird. Mothman was the name given
to a creature sighted several times in the area of Point Pleasant, West
Virginia in the 1960s. This creature was a tall, winged being with eyes
that were either glowing red orbs or that reflected red light. Like
some Thunderbird traditions, the Mothman was a frightening creature and
considered to be a bad omen. In Mothman’s case, the sightings ended
around the time of the disastrous collapse of the Silver Bridge in
1967, which kiiled forty-seven people. The mothman has of course been
attributed to natural causes, with many people suggesting that it was
actually a sandhill crane; a grey large bird, with large red spots that
could have been mistaken for eyes.
Conclusions
There have been other
animals such as the coelecanth and the Laotian rock-rat that were
believed to be long-extinct that were found alive and well. But of the
habitat of these creatures; dense forests and deep oceans lends itself
to their concealment. In contrast, reports of unknown fliers vary from
remote and sparsely populated areas of the world such as the Amazon to
well-populated places like Illinois and Pennsylvania.
It is hard to imagine that
we’ve overlooked either a bird the size of Teratornis or a flying
reptile of about the same size, yet it is hard to ignore the claims of
seemingly reliable witnesses, who sometimes have observed the creatures
in question at close range often during daylight. It is clear that a
significant number of these sightings could be genuine
misidentifications, but what about the rest? There is a great deal of
evidence to suggest that there are enigmatic creatures in our skies
that we haven’t yet been able to identify exactly what they are and
where they come from. To discover more about these strange creatures
might require a willingness to consider the impossible, to think
outside the box and really look at the legend of the Thunderbird from
an entirely fresh perspective. The legend of the Thunderbird may yet
become a reality.
This article was written by FyreSpirit.
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