Thunderbird the bird
 

Was watching one of those show where they are hunting for evidence of Bigfoot. Remember when I saw a huge bird fly by that lore would describe as a Thunderbird.
Don't know what the wingspan was, but from nose to tail it was as long as a car.

Has anyone on Pelican seen a really huge bird like that, ever?

The only really big birds in NA would be the California Condor. Eagles and Turkey Vultures are all we have here, and while they are big, they are not Huge.

Nobody has ever believed me.

I once saw the oldest, largest, and ugliest turkey vulture ever witnessed by a human being in non-prehistoric times (my opinion).

I looked up the size of what one of these is supposed to get to, this one was about 50% larger.

Every now and then a report gets published of a certain species of fish 50% to 200% larger than previously recorded so I guess it would be possible for birds.

Seriously this turkey vulture in Michigan was about the size of a California Condor according to information I researched. The experts at U of M told me I was wrong, they were very sure of themselves.

Old thread on it from back in 2009.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/474303-id-large-bird.html

Along this same stretch of road are some very large raven/crow, much larger than anywhere else I've seen. There might be some experimental super food crops being grown by the university, but that's just a guess. If mice eat the special grain and scavengers eat the mice, anything is possible - right?

I also saw via my headlights in Milford MI, a large dog sized animal (all black) walking in a very cat-like manner. It was going into a mobile home park, perhaps seeking digestible pets - easy prey. Rumors of a black panther in Michigan abound, but I hesitate claiming to be one of the witnesses. I just didn't get that good of a look.

The thing is that excitement can distort perception.

When I look at the photos I took of a disgustingly vulgar looking old turkey vulture sitting atop a barn, the scale does not relate to memory.

This was back in 2009 and I still remember the look in this birds eye as it looked at me with disdain, it freaking had a consciousness or at least my mind attributed one to it. It did take off when I got too close, so it at least it knew I was there.

Here is an example of scale from memory being inaccurate.

Go back and visit one of your old grade schools, they always seem smaller now than as you remembered as a child.

The human mind is not a scientific instrument, but then again there are new discoveries in science every day, even in the natural sciences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_(cryptozoology)
Recent sightings in Pennsylvania in article below, and I thought the T-bird was a SW USA thing.

http://paranormal.about.com/od/thunderbirds/fl/The-Giant-Thunderbird-Returns.htm

There was a resident of our neighborhood convinced she had seen a black panther near sunset just west of our house. She was adamant it was a full size black mountain lion or panther. A few day later I saw it in full sun. It was indeed a large black house cat but I have seen larger house cats. She was convinced it was a huge deadly cat.

One of my oddest travel stories comes from Czech Republic, early 1990's.

I went for a early morning walk, walked for hours. Walked from small village to small town in upper Czech near the Polish border.

1. A cluster of trees (deciduous)/small woods with closely space trees. They were about three inches in diameter/caliper, but over 100 foot tall. Sort of like a bamboo forest.

2. I saw a large hare stand up on it's hind legs and look at me from about 80 feet away. It's ears were almost 1/3 of it's height and it stood up about five foot tall - HUGE.

3. The deer I saw was smaller than the rabbit/hare. Very spindly looking just like the trees, not a fawn, looked fully grown but it's back was only about 26-inches high. Beautiful markings (spots/stripes), look like an art project by the forest goddess.

Strange planet this place called Earth.

I think the Polish men dress up like rabbits in a fur suit. It's their way of attracting a Czech female. You're lucky that you didn't look like a day of fun, apparently.

I've seen some wild things. Mostly after eating mushrooms.

The experts at UoM are always quite sure of themselves, kach. Especially when they're wrong.

BTW, I think that bird on the barn in your other thread is an Arctic Raven. A 60' wingspan, though outside typical, is not unusual. My immediate impulse when I looked at your pics was 'Crow', of course.

One thing for sure, Thunderbird the wine is bad stuff. ;)

I worked with an old black man back at my first job. He drank Thunderbird after payday and whenever he had any money. When he was almost out of money he drank what he called green lizard. It was the stuff barbers used on customers that asked for a shave. It was mostly alcohol with a stinky scent. It was super cheap since it had no booze taxes. He said it tasted terrible but it got him drunk.

Is the Common Raven same as the Arctic Raven?

Similar Species
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Raven/id
Well, that answers the giant crow mystery. Yes, they had 4-5 foot wingspans - scary at first as you drive towards them right on the side of the road - close.

The other bird on the barn roof was older than time, something ugly in the vulture family.

I've seen 100's of turkey vultures over the years, and up close too. This thing was like the grand daddy of them all, in it's own class.

Perhaps it got a hold of some growth steroids in some farmer's feed back when it unregulated and the young bird was in it's growth period. This could be a man-made freak never to be duplicated in the Northern Hemisphere.

I can see this bird pushing cows aside to eat their feed. I can also imagine it clearing out an entire chicken coop for a hearty meal.

https://youtu.be/iS45gE5Mlf8

From the era when doctors recommended cigarettes as good for your throat.

Flemish giant?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...f51a6844cc.jpg

No, plus that a domestic creation.

More like this:

European hare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hare
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...29-cropped.jpg
It stood up and totally amazed me, thought I was hallucinating.

I don't see in that link where they list the maximum size, but this was a healthy one.

EDIT.....found this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hare

One time I saw a rat as big as a medium sized dog. It was in a jungle in North Queensland, Australia.

I was 3 1/2 when I saw the big bird.
We had a dairy 2 blocks from our house.
When i saw it I wasn't frighted, I just thought that was a big bird.
It looked like an eagle but was a dark grey.
Right after it went by I ran inside to tell my mom about it.
It was flying about 10-15 feet above the utility lines at the other end of the block.
It was farther from the lines to the ground than from the lines to the bird.
Flew directly over a parked car on the cross street. Our street did not go thru.
Was almost as long nose to tail as that parked car it flew over.
Went by fairly slow making one slow downward stroke of flapping its wings all the way across the end of the block headed towards the dairy.
Never looked anywhere but straight ahead.
Could not see legs or feet.

You might be like everyone else and dismiss it because I was only 3 1/2.
I have flashes of memory from as far back as being just over 1 years old.
Can describe the train layout my brother and his friend next door put in the next door neighbors attic.
They took me up to let me watch. It was the toy train with 3 rails.
Had to stay in the one place they put me to watch.
Can also describe my brother's go cart they built from wood and used the lawn mower engine to power.
You steered by pulling on a rope on each side. I was sat in it and grabbed the ropes. Got mad when they wouldn't make it go for me.
We moved from that rent house when I was 2 years old.
Told me the memories are very accurate when I describe them to those that were there.
When I saw the bird my Mom was inside with in my brother's bed room painting my brother's desk.
The desk was on newspapers in the middle of the room.
He was getting a new bed so there was nothing in the room but the desk and she had already re-painted the walls.
I have that desk as my home office desk today.

The across the street neighbor, a Marine recruiter tried to make it look like his son had shot and killed the big bird. They showed me some fresh dug dirt with a trash can lid and a brick on it. They told me the lid and brick was so it couldn't get out. Asked them to dig it up and show it to me. They said they couldn't or it would get away. Told them the grave wasn't big enough. The lid and brick were silly if it was really dead. And a BB gun was not big enough to kill it.

It was a couple of weeks before I started playing outside by myself again.

I remember hiding under the basement staircase when a gorilla came down the steps and lifted up the ratty old couch with one hand looking for me.

To this very day I don't go under no couches.

https://bayphotosbydonna.com/2013/07/23/osprey-eagle-interaction/
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1485612266.jpg
The problems I have with the description provided:

1. No build up story, such stories are useful for the author as a recall mechanism in flushing out details. Something you saw on TV may have been the trigger, but no memory of where, when and why as support or context. (EDIT: see next post, gets resolved)

2. Birds in flight are recorded/remembered by wingspan. When on a branch or roof a bird is most often measured/compared by torso dimensions or over all height head to tail. (EDIT: see next post, was seen as side view in flight)

For example the first time I saw a bald eagle was in Washington DC zoo at age 10, it was in captivity, a large netted area, it was sitting on a tree branch motionless. It looked like a stump of wood until it moved, then the size of it clicked in, almost as tall as me, and wider (I was a skinny kid). When it eventually spread it's wings to stretch I recalled thinking it would fill up the small bedroom I slept in at home (9-feet wide).

Alright, this is the sort of memory process I was just looking for. Sorry I posted before reading this.

My wife just showed me a photo of a juvenile/adolescent bald eagle, it is monochromatic (no white hood), all dusty grey looking. My guess is that this is what you saw.

Childhood memories can be very detailed and accurate, but are suspect to cause and affect misinterpretations and scale relationship failures because of normal brain development.

It is easy to mock and ridicule such stories, but a much greater challenge to understand them. Do you take the high road or low road? Depends on your personality.

Here is one part of the scale challenge:

https://www.pinterest.com/najuett/drawing/
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1485615109.jpg

Here is the second part, cause and affect processing.

Case Study: When is Your Brain Fully Developed? - Teenage Hack
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1485615314.png

https://pumpkinperson.com/
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1485615494.png

I'd like to side-skirt the IQ thing and even problem solving ability of young children on this topic. The fact is your brain was in developmental flux at the time of this sighting. You will never experience such a flux again, only perhaps a degrading from something like Alzheimer's disease.

Just saying the context is not where you were standing, the context is your age at time of sighting.

could have been a turkey vulture? i encountered a stationary one while hiking. the thing flew away, it was monstrous.
bigly or big league, take your pick. : )

Playing the pessimist for a moment, how do you know your memories are accurate?

Have they been verified by others?

Photographic evidence to support?

As a note; shared memories can be as inaccurate as eye-witness accounts, and one influential person can sway the memories of others in a desired direction, especially if covering up a misdeed, a trauma is involved, or living a lie.

My wife can remember things from her life at a earlier stage than myself.

Her sister cannot remember squat until a very late age.

In my opinion, my wife is smart, and her sister is stupid, but I cannot say if there is a correlation though.


What Your Oldest Memories Reveal About You
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/longing-nostalgia/201504/what-your-oldest-memories-reveal-about-you

My earliest memory is my mother giving me a bath in the kitchen sink.

And if you drink enough of it you WILL see a thunderbird!

This would be my guess... turkey vultures can be huge.

On the central coast they have a series of volcanic domes, rocky hills a few thousand feet tall, I climbed to the top of one of them.

The turkey vultures love to circle and ride the updraft that comes off the row of volcanic domes.

I laid out on top of the dome and warmed myself in the sun, looking up there were a half dozen vultures circling (nothing unusual, see them around there all the time).I closed my eyes for a few minutes... when I opened my eyes the vultures were circling noticeable lower than when I laid down. :eek:

I don't remember absolutely everything that happened but have flash memories from events from when I was very young.

Remember being taking to the treehouse of the boy next door by him and my brother. I was taken to the treehouse and allowed to read comic books with them. I couldn't read the words in the balloons, but made up a story to go along with the pictures. They laughed at me because it looked like I was reading the comic book. Again before I was two.

My niece was born the day before my 2nd birthday. My dad drove me, Mom, and Grandmother from OKC to Gallup New Mexico to help. Remember waking up in a box on the floor behind the driver's seat with my pajamas on. My Grandmother was in the back seat as well. We were going across the Texas panhandle. I remember it because I did not want to put my clothes on because people could see in the windows while I was changing clothes.

Right after we moved when I was just over 2 Remember going back the the rent house to get one of my toys that was forgotten. It was a thin piece of pressed board about 2ft square with a metal castle in the middle with a working drawbridge. The board was painted with grass, brown roads, and a moat that went around the castle. Specifically remember there was someone living at the rent house and I was very happy carrying my castle board to and getting into our car.

Between when I was 2 and 3 I was limited to the amount of time I could spend putting my weight on my legs. An bad ear infection had gone to the where my bones were growing in one of my legs and the doctors solution was for me to stay off of it. Had lots of pedal toys. Tricycle, tractor, pedal car fire engine, etc. Also had a swing set. Parents used to take me for walks with me in a 2 wheeled cart. Remember going to the doctor and them having me walk down the hall and back while they watched to see if I was limping. I drawed a lot. Memory that sticks out from that time was mom telling me to go do something and me asking if it was okay for me walk to do it. I was in my baby bed, a bed with sides you could raise and lower.

Remember my first bicycle ride after my Dad took the training wheels off. I was 4. Rode it out of the driveway, across the the street and hit the neighbor across the streets car. I asked to have the training wheels put back on but Dad told me to just keep practicing.

Remember getting hit by a firework in the face on the 4th when I was 4. The neighbor boys shot a firework that was a fireball that zipped around zig zagging along the ground, it was called an "N" word chaser. It hit me in the right cheek. Before I was 5 those neighbors put up a stockade fence around their back yard.

My Nephew was born in Feb after I turned 4. My brother was in the Marines and stationed in Brunswick GA. Mom and I went on the train from OKC to Jacksonvile FL to go out so Mom could help. They rented an apartment over a garage on St. Simons Island. Remember riding the train out there. Sitting in a train station in the middle of the night in Mississippi while it was raining waiting for the connecting train. And meeting the conductors.

While in GA remember meeting the girl next door my age, Maria. And going on a date in the back seat of her parents car to go get Root Beer. Did the same thing with my girlfriend at home, Nancy. She was a year older than me. but she moved away before we went on the GA trip. Learned to write so I could be pen pals with Nancy. We were pen pals off and on until we were in Junior High. Not so lucky with Maria just talked a few times and went to get root beer.

Met some of the neighborhood kids on St. Simons Island while in GA and they got me in trouble. We snuck in and played on an in-ground trampoline a couple of houses over. The neighbor kids weren't supposed to play on that ladies trampoline. The old lady that owned the house told us there were snakes under it.

My Dad and brother drove out to bring us home from GA. Remember several parts of that trip as well. Stopped and stayed with some relative my parent knew in Tennessee. Called him uncle Mitch, but he was a distant cousin of theirs. Looking out his back picture window a deer walked by. He had a kid my age and he kept popping my suspenders. I did not like hime at all.

Also stopped at a place called Chimney Rock Hollow. I was very disappointed, it was just an old chimney made of piled up rocks that was all that was left of an old cabin.

That's just stuff I can tie to specific dates 4 years old an younger.

Did not get a wingspan look at the bird. I was looking from the east and it was flying north. But it was flying low and there was a car parked on the cross street that it flew over for size comparison. It did not have the head of a heron, buzzard, vulture, or condor. It was the shape of an eagle and there is not much of similar head and neck but red tailed hawks in Oklahoma, which I have never seen close to town or anywhere as big. The only animal shows on TV when I was 3 was Wild Kingdom. But I did go to the zoo. There weren't many birds at the zoo back then. Only flightless like the ostrich and cassowary. And I knew all those animals were from somewhere else.

Oh I also liked dinosaurs like many young kids. But it was not a prehistoric bird. It did not have a long beak with teeth like all the prehistoric stuff.

That's a lot of clear memories in my opinion.

This was clearly an important event in your life for your brain to keep storing it over and over again, providing new pathways of association for recall.

These pathways are essential for recall of old memories.

My story is as an adult. Ponder what it takes to make a vintage Porsche 911 driver with the Targa top off breezing down a country road at 60 mph to slow down and stop.

A few things could do this; a cop car, a fellow motorist in distress, and a giant bird on the roof of a barn. :D

Until you have had that third thing happen to you, you may never really understand.:cool:

A kangaroo?

Smaller than that, but larger than a wallaby.

If you read the link I posted and do the math:

1. 30" torso/body

2. 16" head/neck/ears

3. 16" legs up on end

Total = 30" + 32" = 64" and 60" is five feet.

The one I saw was full sized, and went from squatted rest (46") to partial full rise (maybe 56"). He did not stand all the way up as males can do fighting/mating rights.

I'm just glad after all these years to find out I was not hallucinating. We drank a lot of Czech beer (pivo) at the inn, and quite frequently.

It was when I was a LOT older that I saw TV shows and heard about Thunderbirds. That made me think of the huge bird I saw.