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Hello, what do you make of this?

This one is a civil war looking pic with soldiers standing behing a large dead flying reptile, photoshop?
http://www.artbell.com/images/Pteradactyl3.jpg

This one was taken at the time of the wtc fiasco, yeat another flying beast?
http://www.artbell.com/images/wtcangel.jpg


These people are doing stuff for The Learning Channel on the jersey devil, chupacabra, UK abc's, it will air on May 7 at 9, just threw that in if anybodys interested?
http://www.monsterhunters.com/


If this stuff already been covered in earlier threads I missed I'll delete it.
 
Picture number 1 has been discussed in the Thunderbird threads. I'll try and find them and add them in.

Edit

Here's one and another and another and another.
There may be more, but I got bored of searching. Sorry. :D
 
Yup, Sally's right about the "Civil War" photo. As for the one from Art Bell's site, the blown up image looks just like a crane (neck coiled back and long legs extended....classic crane in flight pose). Of course, when I tried expanding the original image it didn't come out nearly as clear as the one pictured. :rolleyes:
 
Assorted "Thunderbird" photos

"Civil War pterodactyl" pic 1 = museum model of Pteranodon had & neck with 2 canoes for wings.

"Civil War pterodactyl" pic 2 = alligator with (possibly photoshopped, possibly canvas) wings.

(NOTE a "thunderbird" in Native american legend is NOT a pterodactyl, it is a very large but definitely feathered bird. To avoid confusion "pterodacryls" seen in the USA should not be called Thunderbirds.)

"Thunderbird pinned to wall" - people say they have seen this a lot, but no such photograph has been proved to exist. May be based on a photo of a stork or a crane.

"kid holding small pterodactyl" = dead turkey with fake wings & tail attached.

Most photos of flying vulture-oids seen overhead - no scale to measure wingspan against so could be "real" thunderbirds but more likely ordinary vultures.

This WTC thunderbird - I havent seen this before. It seems there is a WTC everything now - the devil-face simulacra photo, the WTC Aurora (super secret stealth plane) photo, the "cloud angel", etc. Looks like a crane flying left with legs stuck out and head hidden (by perspective), but could conceivably be a swan flying right. It does look spookily like a bird-winged humanoid, but crane is the most likely explanation.

This of course calls doubt on the reported appearance of MOTHMAN... headless humanoid with birdlike wings? Crane? I bet someone will soon be passing this off as the "WTC Mothman" photo - the original Mothman was, of course, a harbinger of death and disaster...

Having said all that, do cranes really live in downtown New York? I thought they were rural and quite rare... then again there is no proof the crane has not been photoshopped into the picture. It does look awfuly big in that angle - but you cant tell if it is in front or behind the building.

I say OOP crane or photoshop.
 
My best guess for the WTC bird photo is simply a seagull. It's MUCH CLOSER to the camera than it looks.

I saw a crane at the lake awhile back (I live in Florida) and cranes are possibly the creepiest looking animals I've ever seen. It's like looking at a dinosaur. This one had the red around the eyes and was likely the same species as the kind that was responsible for some Mothman sightings. I don't blame them.
 
It's true. I see herons fly over my house just about everyday, and I still go "Bwahh! What is that! It is huge and flies like a pterodactyl!" It's such a shame when life turns out to be less exciting than you first thought. ;)

That WTC pic is weird though. I'm not up on my US birdlife, do you have something like a heron or a crane that could have been flying past? It's the length of the feet that makes it look more humanoid than anything else, so I don't think it's a seagull, unless the pic has been doctored. Some large wading type of bird. Or, you know. Mothman. :D
 
Re: Hello, what do you make of this?

tastyintestines said:
This one was taken at the time of the wtc fiasco, yeat another flying beast?
http://www.artbell.com/images/wtcangel.jpg

This is an obvious phoney. Look at the building. Then look at the building in the close-up. Since when does a fuzzy object in the distance become sharper in a blow-up? It doesn't happen.

I don't think this Thunderbird picture has been shown yet. What do you think? Photoshop?:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/oddball/enlarge.cgi?date=2002-03-13
 
Q the Feathered Serpent.

The WTC Picture reminds me a bit too much of Q for my liking, with all the people on the streets wouldn't something had been heard of this earlier?
 
Not a photo, but an "eye witness" account

In this Thunderbird story it appears to have paranormal powers (ie bullets cannot hurt it, its eyes glow in the dark and its feathers disappear rather than fall to the ground!) another made up thing i guess...

http://paranormal.about.com/library/blstory_april02_09.htm

unless thunderbird, like "black dogs" and (possibly) mothman, is not an animal but one of those "zooform phenomena" thingies...
 
Pretty weird to paste a pteradactyle head onto a canoe (but then again, it fooled me, I knew it was fake but didn't notice the canoe).
Yeah, third, text doesn't match picture. And the wings look fake- looks like an old picture of a kid who glued cardboard wings onto his pet duck.
And the first could be anything.
 
barndad said:
Seems that like every other interesting species its on the edge of extinction cos of us.
A bit of a tautology, perhaps? We only find things interesting when they're on the edge of extinction....
 
i wouldn't say so. It seems that if people find something interesting it can quite quickly disappear from the face of the earth. The dodo, when first discovered became a zoological phenomenon and was transported to japan, holland, India and england as a curiosity. The curious appearance and inability to fly led to much theological questioning. If it was a bird with wings why was it unable to fly? This didnt make sense for a creator god to have created useless wings.
Rarity does have an effect on the "interesting-ness" of a species but, as Errol Fuller said. A head that stands out from the others is more likely to get chopped down.
If you look through the last 500 years then we are not only missing the largest sirenian (stellers sea cow), but the largest marsupial carnivore (thylacine) as well as the only flightless member of the Alcidae (Great auk). Most northerly Parakeet (Carolina Parakeet) and most numerous bird (Passenger Pigeon) have disappeared from N.America along with the largest woodpecker (ivory-billed woodpecker).
If the large, flightless or colourful nature of a species makes it interesting (which i think it does) then it seems quite a few of the "interesting" species have gone from the earth.
 
Thunderbird pair sighted (maybe)

Since this happened last week, I thought I'd post this here,
rather than in News Stories:

http://www.rense.com/general26/possiblethunderbird.htm

-------------------------------------
I have received a sighting report of two huge black birds on June 26, 2002. The sighting reportedly occurred in a mountainous area between the towns of Tunkhannock and Nicholson, PA in Wyoming County. The primary witness had stepped out on his back porch at about 9:05 P.M., when his attention was drawn to two huge black birds which were approaching from the north.

His first impression was that they were Herons, but soon realized that the color was wrong, and "they were huge, much larger than any bird I have ever seen."

The two huge birds landed at the top of a very tall coniferous tree. The witness stated that the wingspan appeared to be wider than the branches, just below where they had landed. The body size was estimated to be about six feet from head to tail. The witness also mentioned that the legs were not long like a Heron, or Crane. The oddest feature was the shape of the wings, which according to the witness "Their wings looked batlike."

The tree where the birds landed, seemed as though it would break from their weight. The witness yelled for others in the house to come outside to look. Another family member was able to see the huge black birds as they passed overhead, and headed for some woods. The witness looked in a bird book, and said that the closest species that he could find in shape, was a Black Cormorant, although the size of the birds he saw is out of the range of the Cormorant. The witness looked at the tree, and checked the size of the branches in the tree where the odd birds had rested. He estimated that the wingspan would have been close to 12 feet or somewhat larger.

Investigation note - June, 2002-Greensburg, PA

I went out to interview several members of a family who live in a rural area outside of Greensburg. They report a number of strange incidents around their home in early June. For example at about 2:45 A.M. on the morning of June 7, 2002, one person heard an odd sound like a "swoosh," giving the impression that a huge bird had just past over. It is interesting to note that this location is not far from South Greensburg, where the possible Thunderbird was reported last September. This family was apparently unaware of the previous alleged incident.

Stan Gordon
PA UFO/Fortean Hotline (724) 838-7768
[email protected]
Stan Gordon's UFO Anomalies Zone Website
http://www.westol.com/~paufo

-----------------------------------------------------

Any takers?

TVgeek

P.S. Did everyone find out that the Thunderbird/Civil War
photo was created for the short lived TV series "Freakylinks"?
Loren Coleman now owns the pterodactyl "model" that
is in the photo. If you knew this -- disregard! ;)
 
Interesting that the witnesses thought the birds resembled cormorants - I always think that cormorants look somehow more primitive or reptilian than many other birds.
 
Yes, cormorants belong to the same family as pelicans, boobies, frigatebirds and gannets, all of which look very much like how I imagine live pterodactyls to have looked. (Remember the flying pelicans at the end of one of the Jurassic Park films? (no 2 I think). And I believe footage of a frigate bird was used for the flying gremlin in Gremlins 2.)

I think possibly the description of the wings as "batlike" may have been influenced by popular conceptions in Tv, tabloids etc of Thunderbirds being "living pterosaurs", which I think is extremely unlikely, when you consider that Teratornis, a bird related to New world vultures (which, incidentally, are not that closely related to Old World vultures, which are most closely related to hawks and eagles) and to herons/cranes/storks, which had a 12-15ft wingspan, is known from fossils only 1 million years old in North America.

A missing link between vultures and storks would, I imagine, look quite similar to a cormorant. Although out-of-place condors, cranes and pelicans have all been blamed for Thunderbird sightings.

Whatever it is, I think it is far more likely to be a very large, feathered bird, than any kind of flying reptile. I find it extremely unlikely that any land or air creatures from the Cretaceous era have survived to the present day, without leaving any fossils at all in the intervening period.
 
The oddest feature was the shape of the wings,
which according to the witness "Their wings looked batlike."

DRAGONS!!!!!!

Sorry.Been reading fantasy for the first time and I'm a bit crazed with it you see.
DRAGONS ARE SO COOL!!!

But then, so are unicorns,
and pegasuses,
and minotaurs,
and elves,
and hobbits!!

TOLKIEN!!!! I LOVE that dude!!

*ectasitic*
Is that the right word?
 
OOP condors? An Andean Condor has a wingspan of around 10 feet, stands over 4 feet high, so it's not too far below the estimates.
 
Turkey vultures have a wingspan of six feet and are all black except their heads. But they are common in the Northeast and probably would have been recognized.
 
For reference here is a photo of a Cormorant with its wings extended. Looks fairly similar to a vulture type bird from a distance.

http://www.otterside.com/slidejpg/cormdc4-l.jpg

Incidentally, having just done a bit of google searching on wingspans, a California Condor is 9 1/2 feet and an Andean Condor 10 feet. Surprisingly the next biggest bird in America is the White Pelican which has a wingspan of 9 feet.

(for UK comparison, a grey heron is 7 feet, mute swan 8 feet and Golden eagle 6 1/2 feet (male), 8 feet (female))
 
I saw this story earlier today.I've never read of an Alaskan thunderbird sighting.
 
Native Beliefs

Many of the Native-Alaskan tribes believe in "Little People" and "Giant Birds".
 
So what exactly is a Thunderbird? It is bird, right? If so, why do people always associate pterodactyls--being reptiles--with the Thunderbirds, which are supposed to be fowls?

How large does a bird have to get before it's considered a Thunderbird? Are there ever cases of gigantism among animals, in the way there are among humans? Maybe it's just a huge eagle, like the story suggests (although I liked their way of calling it a "creature" :rolleyes: ). My personal view is that when Inuits or whomever see Big Bird, they put more into it than is actually there, much the way our more primitive forefathers viewed giants as monsters, as opposed to people with genetic anomalies.
 
Giant Winged Creature Sighted in Alaska

http://www.rense.com/general30/giant.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rense.com
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Giant Winged Creature
Sighted Several Times In Alaska
By Peter Porco
Anchorage Daily News
10-15-2



ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A giant winged creature, like something out of Jurassic Park, has reportedly been sighted several times in Southwest Alaska in recent weeks. _ Villagers in Togiak and Manokotak say they have seen a huge bird that's much bigger than anything they have seen before. _ A pilot says he spotted the creature while flying passengers to Manokotak last week. He calculated that its wingspan matched the length of a wing on his Cessna 207. That's about 14 feet. _ Other people have put the wingspan in a similar range. _ Scientists aren't sure what to make of the reports. No one doubts that people in the region west of Dillingham have seen a very large rapto-like bird. But biologists and other people familiar with big Alaska birds say they're skeptical it's that big. _ A recent sighting of the mystery bird occurred Oct. 10 when Moses Coupchiak, a 43-year-old heavy equipment operator from Togiak, 40 miles west of Manokotak, saw the bird flying toward him from about two miles away as he worked his tractor. _ "At first I thought it was one of those old-time Otter planes," Coupchiak said. "Instead of continuing toward me, it banked to the left, and that's when I noticed it wasn't a plane." _ The bird was "something huge," he said. "The wing looks a little wider than the Otter's, maybe as long as the Otter plane." _ The bird flew behind a hill and disappeared. Coupchiak got on the radio and warned people in Togiak to tell their children to stay away. _ Pilot John Bouker said he was highly skeptical of reports of "this great big eagle" that is two or three times the size of a bald eagle. "I didn't put any thought into it." _ But early this week while flying into Manokotak, Bouker, owner of Bristol Bay Air Service, looked out his left window and 1,000 feet away, "there's this big ... . bird," he said. _ "The people in the plane all saw him," Bouker said. "He's huge, he's huge, he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out." _ Nicolai Alakayak, a freight and passenger driver from Manokotak who was flying with Bouker, said the creature looked like an eagle and was as large as "a little Super Cub." _ Comparison to an eagle, certainly. Super Cub? Probably not, scientists said. _ "I'm certainly not aware of anything with a 14-foot wingspan that's been alive for the last 100,000 years," said federal raptor specialist Phil Schemf in Juneau. _ Schemf, other biologists, a village police officer and teachers at the Manokotak School said the sightings could be of a Steller's sea eagle, a species native to northeast Asia and one of the world's largest eagles. It's about 50 percent bigger than a bald eagle. _ _ Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service http://www.shns.com

http://www.rense.com
 
I think the guy just saw a big eagle. It is very difficult to judge size from such a long way away.

Bald eagles wingspan gets up to eight feet, and they are found in Alaska. Maybe it gets bigger than eight feet.....

Ditto for Stellar's sea eagle, as article suggests.

The wandering albatross has an eleven foot wingspan, and fourteen feet isn't much bigger, but it is only found around the south polar regions apparently.

As usual, a few possible explanations other than pterodactyls etc
 
QUOTE: "I don't know of any bird that's three times the size of an eagle," Laing said. "What would that be? An ostrich? What bird occurs here that would possibly be three times the size of an eagle or the size of a Super Cub?"

An ostrich. Right. I think we can rule that out, unless someone chucked it from a plane.

What's always surprised me is the narrow-mindedness of these zoological experts, who place strange and somewhat arbitrary limits on the sizes of creatures, based purely on the maximum size yet recorded. Because wingspan of the largest bird of prey yet verified is 11ft, they say 11ft is the maximum. Why? Surely only a miniscule proportion of such birds have been captured and measured, so it all seems to be rather arrogant speculation on their part. In fact, it is against logic to suggest that the maximum recorded size IS actually the maximum possible size, unless you're talking about a small and well-defined family of birds or animals. I don't get it. Prehistoric feathered birds grew up to 25ft across, so these assertions clearly aren't based on physical limits of the species. I don't know, it just puzzles me that these guys can discount so many witness statements on the basis of totally illogical assumptions.
 
the last couple of nights..

they've been talking a little about this on the "art bell show" ..calling it "mothman..etc..:hmph:
 
The 'In Search of the Mothman' documentary found on 'The Mothman Prophecies' DVD lumps various 'big bird' and 'flying man' stories in together. Loren Coleman features prominently in it, so I guess it is from his work. They mention:

-North American Thunderbird,
-Oriental Geruda,
-Coney Island "flying man" from 1880,
-The 'Huston Batman' from the 1950s,
-Rio Grand(?) 1976,
-Banchees- prophets of doom,
-Mexico City, 1985- Huge, strange birds seen in the weeks before the earthquake,
-Chernobyl- bird-like man seen in the months before.
-And Western Pennsylvania in 2001(?)
 
RE:Justin Anstey

very interesting!! hey do you know where I can see the picture I've heard mention "on the Art Bell Show', of a "flying creature" taken at the world trade center" not long after the planes flew into it..it is said to look like a "flying dinosaur thing"?:confused:
 
Actually, I remember seeing it on Art Bell's website but I can't find it now. It was a sort of long necked serpent.
 
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