Turkey vultures are sighted regularly in this area and I can’t certainly tell the difference between the two. It did not have a white ring around its neck as in this report but the feathers were a uniform black throughout and looked more like a giant crow than a bald eagle, although the silhouette of the head was more along the lines of an eagle, I suppose.

I don’t think humans need fear these birds as, even with their immense wingspan, they could not support our unbalanced bodies long enough to bring a human victim to its roost for feeding. I am sure this is the reason the Lowe boy was dropped after a few feet, with his struggling and clumsy flailing urged the animal to preserve itself and find more easily subdues prey.

We make regular trips to Mount Harriman every summer since encountering this animal in the hopes of being able to capture footage or even shoot the thing out of the air if necessary and have not been fortunate enough to sight the elusive creature again. We maintain hope in seeing it again, nevertheless.

On an unrelated note, I have noticed in the last few years, the emergence of hawks bearing the coloration of a common rock dove (aka, pigeon). Again, this is not a matter of misidentification, as I have seen them perched on shop awnings no more than ten feet from the street below, way too big to be pigeons and the beaks and heads are all wrong for the verminous species.

Is it possible this is a result of adaptation or mimicry, as the predatory birds are introduced into urban populations to control the pigeon population or is it a species of raptor that just happens to share a similar pattern as the rock dove. I am open to opinions.

I think there is some confusion over the tuff of white around the neck if what I saw was of the same species that we are discussing here. I have spent my life in the outdoors, and I have never seen anything quite as boggling as this.

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2) Do large birds of prey sometimes make mistakes re: how much their quarry weighs and whether or not they can carry it away?
Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they?

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3) Do outsized members of otherwise well documented raptor/condor species exist?
Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they? A more relevant question: just how outsized do outsized raptors get?

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4) Could the largest living golden eagle (for example) be so much larger than the average golden eagle as to impress or even confound some human observers?
Of course it could. Why couldn’t it? And if the human observers in question were being attacked by the outsized golden eagle in question, the bird probably wouldn’t need to be very much larger than average in order to appear very much larger than average.

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5) Do extremely large, uncatalogued birds of prey exist?
Who knows? Maybe. But it seems to me that the bulk of the raptors-attacking-people reports don’t require the existence of an unknown species in order to be credible.

I don’t know if it was the footage that appeared on Discovery but here in England it was an episode of a series called ‘In Search Of Myths And Monsters’ and yes it was an episode about thunderbirds.

The footage was taken by a native American man, while he was canoing I believe. I think it was from the late 1970s. There are two birds that are clearly seen flying around. They do indeed look huge and could well have a ten foot wingspan.

But recently I’ve seen a lot more of them just hunkered down on the ground at the side of the road, not moving when I drive by. While walking to the car a couple of times I flinched as a very large shadow passed over me, indicating it was flying quite low at the time.

Weather’s been pretty temperate, not too much sun, not too much rain, temperature pretty comfortable. No change in the cariion that’s around.

Any idea what’s making them less shy?

was the footage of the large birds from the Discovery Channel episode on Thunderbirds? If so, I have seen that footage too–and while it is hard to get an estimate of size, they look big.

There’s a problem about the so-called weight-evidence similar to Nasa’s problems. Apparently she weighed 19 pounds (9,6 kg) and not 19 kilograms at the time.

In addition, the Sami people of Northern Norway are reporting an increase of Sea Eagle’s snatching reindeer calves, but this has yet to be proven (some claim they just say that for government compensation).

There’s no entirely satisfactory explanation of this case, but that reconstruction comes closest to working for me.

Now, what if this was not some exotic but known eagle species? What are our other options?

Golden eagles or juvenile bald eagles could be suspects, although their size and weight-carrying capability does not seem to match.

Audobon’s Washington eagle just might work, if it is a species.

It’s always been impossible for me to accept that plane-sized Thunderbirds have never been captured clearly on film or video and their giant feathers, nests, or eggshells have never been found. However, the eagle might survive undiscovered. as it would often be mistaken for an unusually large golden eagle or young bald eagle, and its feathers, nests, and eggshells would look like large versions of those left by the known native eagles. The white neck feathers might be just an occasional variation that turns up in this species.

Yea, ummm….

Vulture/Buzzard flies down and buzzes kid.

The kid supposedly had marks on him.

Bird and story grow with every person that tells it.

Not buying it, sorry….

I haven’t heard anybody else tell it. I have however seen footage of the mother and son talk about the incident some 25 years later and the bird didn’t grow from their original report in 1977.

I’ve also seen footage of two huge birds taken by an amatuer photographer not too far from that location.