The Myth about Thunder Birds

 

 

and Eagle of Persepolis:

 

 

I think we can add this question: Could it be a Thunder Bird?!

Like dragons, myths of large birds seem to be universal.  Are Persian Roks rumored to by hostile to people (like Thunderbirds)or beneficial to people? It is interesting to note that while dragons were viewed as hostile in Europe, in Asia they were viewed as good, semi divine creatures.

Originally posted by eaglecap Native American folk lore is filled with stories about the great Thunder bird, especially in the southwest states of Arizona and New Mexico.

As a side note, the 45th Infantry Brigade which has many Native American soldiers (Oklahoma National Guard) is nicknamed "Thunder Bird" and the unit emblem bears a large Thunder Bird.

 

 

 

THUNDERBIRDS OVER ILLINOIS
 
STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN THE SKY!
 
 
They appear out of the sky like the shadow of doom. They have been described as having
wingspans of up to 20 feet wide, hooked talons and razor
-
like beaks. They are the mystery
birds of
 
Illinois.
 
The ancient Indians of Illinois were no strangers to these birds. Two giant petroglyphs once
decorated the stone bluffs near Alton, Illinois. The paintings portrayed a huge, winged creature
known as the
PIASA: The Monster Bird
, which is translated to mean the "bird that devours men".
The French explorer Pere Marquette recorded the first accounts of the paintings in 1673. He was
impressed enough by them to record them in hi
s journals and note that the account of the Piasa
involved a terrible creature that preyed on the local Indians. An Indian warrior killed the creature
and a painting of it was etched onto the bluffs to recall the legend.
 
American Indian lore is filled with
 
stories of strange, monster birds with enormous wingspans and
the propensity to carry away human victims. They called these creatures "Thunderbirds" because
the
Legend of the Giant B
ird
 
claimed that their flapping wings made a sound like rolling thunder.
The birds have been described as having wingspans of 20 to 40 feet or more; hooked talons; razor
-
sharp beaks; and sometimes descriptions which seem oddly close to
Quetzalcoatlus
, one of the
pterodactyls of prehistoric times.
 
But not all of these stories and accounts date back to the times of the early Americans.
Most of them come from times that are not so lo
ng ago.... and are disturbingly close to
home.
 
One modern day "flap" of Thunderbird sightings began in April 1948, according to
 
Loren Coleman
 
in
his book, CURIOUS ENCOUNTERS. On April 4, a former Army Colonel named Walter F. Siegmund
revealed that he had s
een a gigantic bird in the sky above
Alton
. He had been talking with a local
farmer and Colonel Ralph Jackson, the head of the Western Military Academy, at the time. "I
thought there was something wrong with my eyesight," he said, "but it was definitely a
bird and not
a glider or a jet plane. It appeared to be flying northeast... from the movements of the object and
its size, I figured it could only be a bird of tremendous size."
 
A few days later, a farmer named Robert Price from
Caledonia
 
would see the sam
e, or a similar,
bird. He called it a "monster bird... bigger than an airplane". On April 10, another sighting would
take place and this time in
Overland
. A huge bird was spotted by Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Smith and Les
Bacon. They said they thought the creatur
e was an airplane until it started to flap its wings furiously.
 
On April 24, the bird was back in
Alton
. It was sighted by EM Coleman and his son, James. "It was
an enormous, incredible thing with a body that looked like a naval torpedo," Coleman recalled
later.
"It was flying at about 500 feet and cast a shadow the same size as a Piper Cub at that height."
 
Then, on May 5, the bird was sighted for the last time in
Alton
. A man named Arthur Davidson
called the police that evening to report the bird flying ab
ove the city. Later on that same night,
Mrs. William Stallings of St. Louis informed the authorities that she had also seen it. "It was
bright, about as big as a house," she said. A number of sightings then followed in the St. Louis are,
but ironically, ju
st when the public excitement over the bird reached its peak, the sightings came
to an end.
 
Sightings of strange birds have not ended in Illinois and in fact continue today. One of the most
exciting, and frightening, Illinois encounters occurred in 1977 in
 
Lawndale
, a small town in Logan
County. On the evening of July 25, two giant birds appeared in the sky above Lawndale. The birds
were reported several times as they circled and swooped in the sky. Finally, they headed straight
down and reportedly attacked
 
three boys who were playing in the backyard of Ruth and Jake Lowe.
One of the birds grasped the shirt of ten
-
year
-
old Marlon Lowe, snagging its talons into the cloth.
The boy tried in vain to fight the bird off then cried loudly for help.
 
The boy’s cries
brought Marlon’s mother running outside. She later reported that she had seen the
bird actually lift the boy from the ground and into the air. She screamed loudly and the bird
released the child. It had carried him, at a height of about three feet, for a d
istance of about
forty feet. She was sure that if she had not come outside, the bird had been capable of carrying
the boy away. Luckily, although scratched and badly frightened, Marlon was not seriously injured.
 
Four other adults appeared on the scene with
in seconds of the attack. They described the birds as
being black in color, with bands of white around their necks. They had long, curved beaks and a
wingspan of at least 10 feet. The two birds were last seen flying toward some trees near Kickapoo
Creek.
 
A
 
second version of the Lawndale event is as follows:
 
July 25, 1977 Lawndale Illinois it was around 8:30 p.m. when Marlon Lowe a 10
year old boy was running for his life. He was playing with two friends in his
family back yard when suddenly out of no where
two huge black birds came out of
the sky and began pursuing one of Marlons friends Travis Goodwin happily, Travis
managed to escape by jumping into the swimming pool. Then the two switched there attention to Marlon. Marlon ran away as fast as he could but
it was not
fast enough. As he w as running he felt the talons of one of the birds grip the
shoulder straps of his sleeveless shirt. Next the boy weighing 65 lb. was lifted of
the ground 10 ft. Screaming and shouting at the top of his lungs as the bird
easi
ly carried him 40 ft. through the air from the back yard to the front yard.
His parents Ruth and Jake Lowe heard the screaming and ran out side so did two
family friends working near by Ruth was the first to see this horrific sight that
would froze her blo
od. There her son was being abducted by a huge black bird
resembling a Condor, punching up at its legs with all his might as his feathered
kidnapper carried him aloft. Seconds later however, one of his punches must have
hit home, because the bird suddenly
opened his talons and dropped him to the
ground before souring away with its mate. The four adults ran to the boy and
discovered to there relief that except for a frayed shirt where the bird had
grabbed him Marlon was physically ok. This is just one of the
 
many bizarre
accounts on file featuring encounters in North America with giant birds. Birds
that should be impossible but yet seem to exist. In the case of Marlon Lowe he
and his parents said the bird most closely resembled a Andean Condor, a black
vultur
e like species with a wing span up to 10 ft. this species however is not
native to North America. There is however a smaller version called the California
condor which was once widely distributed across North America but by 1977 was
virtually extinct in ei
ther case the structure of the condors feet in incapable of
lifting and transporting anything as heavy as a ten year old boy.
 
 
Three days later, a McLean County farmer spotted a bird of the same size and description flying
over his farm. He, his wife, and
 
several friends were watching radio
-
controlled airplanes when the
bird flew close to the models. He claimed the bird had a wingspan of again, at least 10 feet across.
It dwarfed the small planes that buzzed close to it.
 
The next sighting took place near
B
loomington
 
when a mail truck driver named James Majors
spotted the two birds. He was driving from
 
Armington
 
to
Delevan
 
when she saw them alongside of
the highway. One of the birds dropped down into a field and snatched up a small animal. He believed
the tw
o birds were probably condors, but with 8 to 10 foot wingspans!
 
On July 28, Lisa Montgomery of
Tremont
 
was washing her car when she looked up and saw a giant
bird crossing the sky overhead.
 
At 2:00 AM on Saturday, July 30, Dennis Turner and several friends
 
from
Downs
 
reported a monstrous bird perched on a telephone pole. Turner claimed that the bird dropped something near
the base of the pole. When police officers investigated the sighting, they found a huge rat near
the spot.
 
Reports of giant birds continu
ed to come in from Bloomington and the north central Illinois area,
then finally further south, from Decatur to Macon and Sullivan. On July 30, the same day the birds
were reported near Bloomington, a writer and construction worker named "Texas John Huffer
"
filmed two large birds while fishing at
Lake Shelbyville
. Huffer was a resident of Tuscola and was
spending the day with his son when they both spotted the birds roosting in a tree. Huffer
frightened the birds with his boat horn and when they took flight
, he managed to shoot over 100
feet of film. He sold a portion of the footage to a television station in Champaign for a newscast.
Huffer said that the largest bird had a wingspan of over 12 feet.
 
After the footage aired, experts were quick to dismiss Huff
er’s claims, along with the reports of
everyone else who reported the birds. Officials from the Department of Conservation insisted the
birds were "merely"
Turkey Vultures
 
of the species
 
cathartes aura
. Not surprisingly, these claims
were also refuted by wildlife experts and cryptozoologists who stated that no turkey vultures were
of the size reported by witnesses. The largest flying bird in North America is the California
Condor, which h
as a wingspread of up to 9 feet. The Condor is also on the endangered species list
and is restricted to a few areas in California. There is little chance that a few stray birds traveled
to Illinois to attack small children!
 
Another tale, related by Loren C
oleman, involved the killing of a giant bird in December 1977.
Strangely, this event also took place near
Lawndale
. Apparently a woman was on her way to work
one morning when she saw something that looked like "a man standing in the road with something
ove
r its arms". The woman collapsed and was hospitalized, but later recovered. A group of men,
after hearing this report, went to the spot, killed a large bird and then burned the body. The story
was kept under wraps for some time for fear of ridicule.
 
So, w
hat are these creatures? Some cryptozoological researchers like Loren Coleman believe that
these thunderbirds may be
Teratorns
, a supposedly extinct bird that once roamed North and
So
uth America. If these prehistoric survivors are still around today, they could certainly account
for the reports of the giant birds.
 
At this point, such creatures remain a mystery but one thing is sure, the sightings have continued
over the years and occas
ionally an unusual report still trickles in from Central Illinois. So keep that
in mind the next time that you are standing in an open field and a large, dark shadow suddenly fills
the sky overhead. Was that just a cloud passing in front of the sun... or s
omething else??
 
GIANT BIRD UPDATE:
 
As late as Wednesday October 16, 2002, in an article
published in the Anchorage Daily News, and also picked up by the wire services,
reported "a giant winged creature like something out of Jurassic Park" sighted several
times in Southwest Alaska.
(source)
 
 

 

John Audubon sighted an extraordinarily large Eagle in the Northwest, controversial but interesting-

 

                                http://biofort.blogspot.com/2006/10/substantiating-audubons-washington.html

 

What I've been looking for are reports from the alleged sightings of TerraTorns, I may looking in the wrong places, I don't know. 

 

 

I agree that ascertaining distance is difficult, however, several of these incidents occurred on the ground and within a reasonable distance of several groups of people.  The best estimates of wing span comes from these sightings.  Several involved in the sightings put wingspans at 16-20 feet in width.  When your talking wing spans over 12 feet, your talking previously unknown species.

Not recently.  I think that the various species of Thunderbirds are rare and getting rarer. Especially the terestrial species.