Comments on: Big Bird Report: 1978, Florida

By: Spinach Village

Spinach Village — Thu, 26 May 2011 05:53:42 +0000

Great stuff! All the witness accounts!

By: jrm3434

jrm3434 — Tue, 17 May 2011 06:12:42 +0000

I’ve been coming to Cryptomundo for years but only registered just now because when I was 14 I saw almost the exact same thing in Kingman Arizona. I was with my friend’s family driving to have lunch in the Hualapi mountains one Sunday after church in a 70s era Bronco when I saw what looked like a man standing in the middle of the road. As we got closer, I realized it was the biggest bird I’d ever seen. I’ll never forget how creeped out I was as we swerved to avoid it because it would not move. It just stood there and stared at us as we went around. It may have been some kind of vulture, but it was huge. it was easily looking eye to eye with me in the back seat of the bronco. I’m 6’5″ now and only a little taller than the top of said 70s era Bronco, so this thing was at least 6′ tall. And I saw it from a few feet away.

By: whiteriverfisherman

whiteriverfisherman — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:35:59 +0000

This witness’s story caught my attention because he describes exactly what my ex-wife told me she saw around nine years ago. At the time we lived in a rural area in south central Indiana. I had told her about my interest in the Thunder bird years before that and she got a good laugh out of it. She said I was nuts. Anyway, she was on her way home from the store. She turned off of state hwy 550 in Martin County onto our rural road. She noticed some vultures on a deer carcass next to the road ahead of her. She said she could see one of the vultures was bigger than the rest. When she approached she realized the big one was much bigger than rest of them. So large that it scared her. She slowed down to have a better look and she said the big one rose up and looked at her through the passenger window of her minivan. The head was even with the upper half of the window. She said the head was bigger than any bird she had ever seen but looked very much like a vulture. The head was so much larger than a normal vulture it looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. That’s when she sped out of there. She said it looked like a different species. I asked if it was standing on the deer but she said no. It was behind the deer further down in the ditch. She described it almost exactly as the Florida witness did. The first thing she said when she came home prior to telling me her story was “uh, I think I just saw one of your thunderbirds” She was pretty upset. I drove back to the spot but the vultures were not there. The carcass was still there. I did a rough measurement and the bird would have had to have been around six or seven feet tall in order to look directly into the window of the minivan from where it stood behind the deer. Was she lying? I don’t think so. She looked at it from less than 15 feet away and had other vultures there for comparison. There was no way she could have misjudged the size.

By: siquisiri

siquisiri — Sat, 14 May 2011 22:33:33 +0000

Its amazing what you can find on the net! Heres some info on the store I saw the book in, who knows, maybe its been republished!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing%3F

By: siquisiri

siquisiri — Sat, 14 May 2011 22:24:38 +0000

I always find articles on these birds interesting. The odd stories of the LOST Thunderbird photo hit home as I remember seeing the photo in a Texas general store in a local pamphlet publication on a family trip to Mexico. I regret not buying it, but I remember the pic really freaked me out at around 15 years old. It showed the stretched out bird nailed to the side of a barn with a group of men sitting in front of it. I remember thinking, my god loook at the size of that thing!

By: kgehrman

kgehrman — Sat, 14 May 2011 19:52:36 +0000

I find that big birds appear much larger when you observe them with a creature that they are trying to eat. Check out this video clip of a medium sized golden eagle and its lunch. Makes you rethink the doubts about skinny little Marlln Lowe's ride back in 1977. F. J. Cosentino may actually have seen the same bird, if you look at the time frame, I am not saying it was an eagle. But perhaps a condor blown of course during a wind storm. The oddest thing I see in F.J.s report is the fact that his bird lifted straight off the coon and flew towards him. Even condors need a high cliff or a deep canyon to launch into flight. They are too big to gain altitude right of the ground. They are more like hangliders than flappers.

By: Shelley

Shelley — Sat, 14 May 2011 18:49:47 +0000

I don’t know about the ibis, but here in So. IL we have turkey buzzards that can stand 4 ft tall, so perhaps there are some that are 6 ft. They have the red eyes and the scary prehisoric look to them, and if you catch them on the road working a road kill, they inflate themselves to look bigger and more menacing. Come to the Buzzard Fest some spring in Makanda and talk to the experts about your sighting and get to pet a real turkey buzzard.

By: sonofthedestroyer

sonofthedestroyer — Sat, 14 May 2011 18:03:02 +0000

Semillama,
If you want to accuse the eyewitness of being a liar, be straight to the point.
Misidentified glossy ibis my rear end

By: semillama

semillama — Sat, 14 May 2011 15:12:15 +0000

Being a birder, I have to say I find "Giant bird" reports some of the least plausible cryptid stories, simply because I know how easy it is to misjudge size and shape of a bird. In addition, Florida is a heavily birded state, due to the fact that many birds can be seen there easily that are hard to see or non-existent elsewhere. Yet no birder has ever reported such a giant bird to my knowledge. If this guy is not just making up the entire story, then I would have to guess he misidentified a Glossy Ibis and for some reason inflated the size of the bird in his mind.