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A follow-up to the original ADN story
"People in Alaska can appreciate this stuff," Bouker said, adding that those in the Lower 48 cannot understand Great Land dimensions. "In Alaska, we see big birds, big moose, big fish, things you don't see down south."
 
Big bird in Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) -- A bird the size of a small airplane was recently said to be seen flying over southwest Alaska, puzzling scientists, the Anchorage Daily News reported this week.
The newspaper quoted residents in the villages of Togiak and Manokotak as saying the creature, like something out of the movie "Jurassic Park," had a wingspan of 14 feet (4.6 meters) -- making it the size of a small airplane.
"At first I thought it was one of those old-time Otter planes," the paper quoted Moses Coupchiak, 43, a heavy equipment operator from Togiak, as saying. "Instead of continuing toward me, it banked to the left, and that's when I noticed it wasn't a plane."
The Daily News, the largest daily in Alaska, said scientists had no doubt that people in the region, west of Dillingham, had seen the winged creature but they were skeptical about its reported size.
"I'm certainly not aware of anything with a 14-foot wingspan that's been alive for the last 100,000 years," the paper quoted raptor specialist Phil Schemf as saying.
Coupchiak said the bird disappeared over the hill and he then radioed Togiak residents to tell them to keep their children in.
Another local resident, a pilot who had initially dismissed the reports, said he recently saw the bird from a distance of just 1,000 feet (300 meters) while flying his airplane.
"The people in the plane saw him," John Bouker was quoted as saying. "He's huge, he's huge, he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out."
Schemf and Rob Macdonald of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said there had been several sightings over the past year and a half of a Steller's eagle, a fish-eating bird that can weigh 20 pounds (10 kg) and have a wingspan of eight feet (2.60 meters), the newspaper reported.


CNN web site 19th October 2002
 
yeah..per follow up there...

its one of them thar stellar eagles I's a bet ya!!anybody gonna post a picture of one of 'em??:yabba:
 
I refer you this way (threads now merged, so link deactivated. Stu)
 
Mothman & The Thunderbird Separated at Birth?

I just realised that this is in the current Breaking News section.:

http://www.boudillion.com/Moth/mothman.html

There is a startling visual resemblance between the Mothman descriptions and the Thunderbird artifact. The single difference is the head - Thunderbird has one, Mothman doesn't. If the holes in the Thunderbird figure were intended as eyes, the identical placement of the eyes is a significant feature. With the exception of the head, the Thunderbird is a figure that exactly reproduces the Mothman descriptions.
 
Many thanks to..

Beans Baxter .more than anyone could ask for!! thanks for the site...and of course..rynner & justin....ok got to go read that site "great photo's" and all matter of info, on beanbaxter's find!!:)
 
This thread has now been merged with the one in News Stories on the same subject.

Stu
 
Sorry to drag this up again, but...

Did anyone else notice the Thunderbird sightings
preceeding the large Alaskan earthquake?

In a recent discussion with an
American Indian Studies professor,
he commented that Thunderbeings (not just birds)
are a very powerful sign. They bring chaos
with them -- but when they leave, there is
renewal. Lets watch for some benefit to come
from the Alaskan earthquake. I thought that
was a very interesting take on the situation!

His further advice is that if you dream about
thunder or lightning, you should
probably do that activity (to the best of your ability)
in your waking life. That is a VERY powerful sign.

Oh -- and on a side note -- Native Americans hate the
idea of the Crazy Horse monument. You do not destroy
a mountain to commemorate a man. And it doesn't
even LOOK like Crazy Horse. ;)

TVgeek
 
Alaskan Earthquake

The connection between the Thunderbird sighting and the Earthquake was not overlooked by me. Having read the Mothman Prophocies I was wondering if some sort of disaster was going to happen when the report of the sighting happend. Let me tell you guys, that quake was no joke. Scared me bad it did! I had to stop playing my Playstation and grab my dog and my old lady (in that order) and stood in a doorway. If the epicenter of that quake had been closer to Anchorage we would have see thousands of injuries and few deaths. So does anyone else think there is a connection? If so what IS the connection? Are the Thunderbirds Spectral warnings? Interdeminsional travlers that enter and exit through gates opened by disasters? Let me hear your theories.
 
As many animals reportedly go bananas immediatly before a quake, it is likely that the thunderbird is no different.
And if they perhaps live mostly away from the eye of humans (in caves perhaps) most of the time, they may have been disturbed by the pre-shock geological energies / vibes, and taken to flying about in the open. Hence the increase in sightings.

I still think there's probably an interdimensional aspect as well.

You had a huge quake in Alaska in the 60s, didn't you Beansbaxter? With the map having to be redrawn afterwards?

Do you know if there were any thunderbird reports from that time?
 
60's Quake

I wasn't living in Alaska in the 60's (actually I wasn't even alive then.) I can look into it and see if there was any Thunderbird sightings but, info that old will be hard to come by most likely. The quake was pretty bad there are still fields of dead trees that were killed by the quake in the 60's. Also alot of the land around Anchorage actually sank about 6 ft. Glad I wasn't around when it happened.
 
Bump

JackSkellington said:
I've only heard descriptions of the "mythic" thunderbird picture... However, how many people are meant to have seen this photo?

and if it was indeed taken was it ever published?
I've seen it. I've definitely seen it - a monochrome piccie of a Pterosaur of some kind nailed to a barn wall - I think it was featured in Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World, and then again possibly in the book (wish I still had a copy :rolleyes: ).

But I've seen the image, and saw it long before I heard about it (if you see what I mean) so I didn't confabulate it. It's out there somewhere...
 
the true Thunderbird Photograph was apparently published in the Tombstone Epitaph in 1886. Supposedly shot by miners who claimed "more are living in the mountains" which may or may not be a significant claim. as with all reports with cryptozoology coming from "unreliable sources" the miners either suffered group hallucinations from being drunk all the time or mistook the beast for a commonly known bird. hence the specimen(s) were rejected, cases uninvestigated yet still sightings come in to this day and this photograph has mysteriously disappeared. Any copies of the photograph you've seen in books and the like is guaranteed to just be a representation since there are no existing copies of this tombstone epitaph volume any more and Ivan T. Sanderson's photocopy went missing decades ago when he "loaned it to associates" and the originals location is completely unknown. The kicker is this monsterous creature supposedly had a 36 ft. wingspan, yet none of the men bothered to take a souveneir as proof of its existence. a Skull, wing, piece of skin, ANYTHING. you'd think that with similar people taking 12 point antlers off deers they've shot, they'd do something to prove the existance of this thunderbird, in spite of scientific rejection.
 
Published on Monday, May 17, 2004 11:40 AM CDT

Film crew documents Tuscola chief's big bird story

By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer

FINDLAY -- The large "Thunderbirds" return every 27 years to steal away the children of the Cherokee people, according to legend.

On Sunday, Chief John "A.J." Huffer returned to the lake where he claimed to have filmed two such Thunderbirds almost 27 years ago.

Were they really the monstrous predators of Cherokee lore, or were they just turkey buzzards basking in the warmth of summer?

Huffer believes in the former. But a film crew from Canada is trying to separate fact from fiction, and, perhaps, entertain young viewers of the non-fiction show "Mystery Hunters" in the process.

After all, entertainment follows closely behind Huffer, a Tuscola resident and chief of the Illinois Cherokee Band.

"It takes a Cherokee to film a Cherokee legend," said Huffer, 69.

In a deep yet gravely voice, he narrates the story like someone who has told it a thousand times. He probably has.

"I think I have photographed a living legend," he said.

Thus, he boarded a canoe Sunday with 16-year-old Araya Mengesha, one of two "reporters" on the documentary show aired by networks of Discovery Communications Inc.

With a cameraman, sound man, director and production assistant in tow, Huffer and Mengesha paddled across Lake Shelbyville while the chief recalled his tale.

A host of Internet Web sites describe how, in the summer of 1977 in Lawndale, a large bird swooped down and momentarily grabbed a young boy by the name of Marlon Lowe.

And rumors soon took wing that the Thunderbirds of old were back again. Of course, a sizeable reward was offered for pictures of them.

Huffer, who had learned to use a 16 mm camera with the U.S. Marine Corps, set out with his son, Jason, on the morning of July 26, 1977.

As they entered a cove near the Findlay marina on Lake Shelbyville, they spied two large birds in a tree. Huffer turned on his camera, the noise of which scared the birds into flight.

He shot about 100 feet of color film. Copies have since been purchased by television producers all over the world.

Huffer estimated the jet-black birds had wingspans of 18 feet and 14 feet, respectively.

Almost 30 years later, the story caught the attention of Montreal-based Apartment 11 Productions, which produces the children's show "Mystery Hunters."

"We're doing legends and myths," said Serge Marcio, director of the Thunderbird segment. "We're into ghost stories."

Mengesha and the rest of the Canadian crew also spent time Sunday in Normal with an Illinois State University professor and bird expert, Angelo Capparella.

After viewing Huffer's film, the professor told the young reporter that the birds probably were just turkey vultures, according to Cassie Fifer of Sullivan, the crew's production assistant, who was recruited for the Illinois shoot.

Marcio said "Mystery Hunters" will leave it up to the viewers to decide.

"There are pros and there are cons," he said. "That's what makes a mystery — there are no definite answers."

http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2004/05/17/news/news03.txt
 
Another Thunderbird Photo?

This appears to be a different "thunderbird" photo from either of the ones which usually get claimed to be the "original" thunderbird photo (which are known and admitted fakes).

http://www.lucasmedia.ch/cc/thunderbird.htm

I can't seem to find anything about the origins of this photo, but the "bird" in it looks pretty fake to me, and also is probably nowhere near the size of a "real" thunderbird (if reports of sightings are to be believed).

Still, there's a possibility this one might be the photo that everyone remembers seeing in some book, and when they found the book years later it wasn't there...
 
This is another well know fake - the men are actually standing around a dead criminal - I think Mark Chorvinsky showed the before and after version in a print issue of Strange Magazine

Gordon
 
Where...?

Hmm...They must've moved it or something--I can't understand the German, and Google doesn't seem to want to translate anything today...

If you've saved it to your PC, upload it please.

Nick
 
I also recall seeing the thunderbird photograph, although i'm far too young, if no one else has seen it in at least 20 years!
 
What's the famous thunderbird picture?
 
Well: basically a photograph of a Thunderbird, a sort of legendary american massive bird, was supposedly published by a local texan paper called the tombstone gazette or similar in the 1800s. The bird had been shot down, and is surrounded by various townspeople brandishing guns. Anyway, the memory of the photograph is apparently familiar to many people, but no one can actually trace the photograph at all, if it ever did exist.
 
Is this not it?

thunderbird.jpg
 
That's not the picture that was featured in Freaky Links, was it? What's the source?
 
Isn't the Thunderbird supposed to be hanging up on a barn wall or something?
 
Out of the two, I would say the second one looks the most authentic and on reflection, the first one looks like it is a staged copy of the second one. Hadn't heard of thunderbird until today so I'm off to do more reading.
 
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