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My First Encounter With Strangeness

damando5

Fresh Blood
Joined
Dec 9, 2018
Messages
21
I had an encounter back in the mid-70s when I was just a kid. I used to pick cucumbers alongside of migrants for extra cash and more than likely to keep me busy and out of trouble. This happened on a Sunday and I was in the field pulling full bags of pickles into a single row so when the tractor came along it is a lot easier to pick up. Anyways I heard a strange sound that was kind of like a cackle but strong-out. I ignored it but then heard it again a lot closer and immediately saw where it came from. A very large strange looking bird that was flying overhead that at first I mistaken for a sandhill crane but quickly realized this was not only bigger but looked weird. I first noticed a crown on the head that came to a point and a tail which was longer than the legs [it was easily twice the size of a crane]. It spooked me for a few days and finally had a chance to go to the city and look for info on what I had seen. After about 6-8 months I found a mailing address for Mr.Whitcomb [who I had read that he was interested in strange birds and had traveled to Papua New Guinea] about a month or two later I actually received a letter from him.
 
Sorry bout that. The location was central Wisconsin in Marquette county. I had saved the letter for yrs but somewhere along the line it has been misplaced [Not lost for good]. I am sure I put it somewhere. I believe he was interested in the sighting However he had just released a new book prier to me contacting him. Not sure of the name of the book but I did purchase a copy and realized that there where many sightings of strange birds right here in the states and that he was going back to Papua New Guinea for another expedition.
 
So are you suggesting that you saw a pterosaur or something similar?
 
How familiar are/were you with the local birdlife in general? I know kids think they know everything but - were you a birdwatcher or someone aware of them just on a 'oh yes, there are birds' basis?

I ask because I am regularly stopped by people going 'did you see THAT?!' when birds fly over. It's usually a heron. But because they aren't used to rural birdlife flying low overhead, they don't know what they are looking at.
 
Do cranes make much of a noise? A heronry is a noisy place to be and if the herons are 'crake-craking' as they go over I can quite understand why someone would think they'd seen something prehistoric.
 
Do you ever notice how some movies use the sound of cranes as carnivorous birds like in the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" ?
 
Sounds like a male peacock. They have a crest on the head.
 
Peacocks aren't usually much ones for flying. Maybe that's why one wouldn't be recognised if it was flying overhead? I don't know that I've ever seen one go by any higher than knee height (although I've seen them perching on quite high roofs, so they must fly sometimes). Maybe the domestically kept ones tend to have their wings clipped to stop them leaving (and also flying)?

Am realising how little I know about peacocks (and, by extension, peahens), apart from the noise.
 
All I know is having sheltered outside a peacock cage, in the rain, I can imitate the sexiest peahen in creation. It was quite fun, in the Efteling theme park in the Netherlands, where they have them running around loose, to get one to display for the crowds.
Another angle I'm just rebounding from is the proto-religions Alan Garner works on in Boneland.
 
The sight of a peak flying in *thunk*ing down onto an unexpected tree is certainly an odd thing to behold, unless you know what it was and were expecting it. All those tail feathers still trail behind it for like a meter in length , and it has a wingspan, size and weight not too far dissimilar to a goose or a swan.

So when they land you'll hear it.

I grew up in Warwickshire. Warwick Castle has always had peacocks on site in my lifetime. They roost up the trees around the Castle. Trees big enough to accommodate them. During the 80s I can recall the odd peacock making its way as far as the surrounding towns and villages.
 
Peacocks aren't usually much ones for flying. Maybe that's why one wouldn't be recognised if it was flying overhead? I don't know that I've ever seen one go by any higher than knee height (although I've seen them perching on quite high roofs, so they must fly sometimes). Maybe the domestically kept ones tend to have their wings clipped to stop them leaving (and also flying)?

Am realising how little I know about peacocks (and, by extension, peahens), apart from the noise.
From what I can gather peacocks don't really fly much, rather 'fall with grace'. It doesn't look like they really can fly overhead, but I may be very wrong.
 
From what I can gather peacocks don't really fly much, rather 'fall with grace'. It doesn't look like they really can fly overhead, but I may be very wrong.


They don't fly high to migratory kind of height. You generally won't see them flying long distances. But they can. It's not uncommon to see them on top of the turrets at Warwick Castle. And that's quite a way up.

f52d37a3a963f9c52862c0c3b655723b--warwick-castle-diane.jpg
 
They don't fly high to migratory kind of height. You generally won't see them flying long distances. But they can. It's not uncommon to see them on top of the turrets at Warwick Castle. And that's quite a way up.
The secret being, the machicolation's only about three feet above the walkway on the other side....
 
A friend recently returned from a trip to Dunedin, Florida and told me he visited a neighbourhood in that city which is home to a large number of peacocks. He and his companion walked around for a while admiring the birds and he stated aloud that he found the birds lovely. A local resident who was within earshot replied, "You wouldn't say that if you lived here!"

Indeed. The piles of excrement don't bear thinking about.
 
Anyway, my first encounter with the weird? Hard to say, Perhaps it was aged 11, coming across the KGB for the first time, at the start of the Lada-Fiat 125 rip-off. Academician Ivanoff and minder, in the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, at the Fisita conference. Definitely something Tolkeinish about the atmosphere there. I didn;t know it at the time, later I found myself living in the lounge of his Mum's place in Edgbaston. Something about that place still bore his imprint.
 
...he found the birds lovely. A local resident who was within earshot replied, "You wouldn't say that if you lived here!"

Indeed. The piles of excrement don't bear thinking about.

I think it would be more the effing racket that peacocks make that would be the issue:


If a neighbour acquires one of these perambulating foghorns l’d suggest the “Three S” solution:

Shoot
Shovel
Shut the **** up

maximus otter
 
The farm just down the road from me had guinea fowl for a while. They moved as a flock and took it upon themselves to make sure nobody was ever late for work - or got a lie in.

When I had hens we raised chicks for a while and so had cockerels, and I've never had such awful dreams as I did when prompted by the cockerel starting to crow under my window. The first early crows sound like someone being strangled. When you are deeply asleep, this sound gives rise to the scariest dreams!
 
When I had hens we raised chicks for a while and so had cockerels, and I've never had such awful dreams as I did when prompted by the cockerel starting to crow under my window. The first early crows sound like someone being strangled. When you are deeply asleep, this sound gives rise to the scariest dreams!

My brother and his wife raise chickens. The crowing adolescents have voices like young teenage boys -- their voices break and squawk in the same way. I can only imagine what it would be like having that noise woven into an early morning dream!
 
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