Thunderbird

When I write something, I spend a lot of time considering it and doing as much research as a I can before I put something out there. This cryptid I had a lot of fun considering; there are a lot of stories and a lot of reported sightings that are out there. There are also reports all over the world so there are different perspectives about what it is and where it came from.

Details of the looks vary depending on where the sightings are being reported but mostly it's said that it’s a bird big enough to carry off a fully-grown man with either smooth or feathery skin. The head is usually reported to resemble the overall looks of an alligator right down to the razor-sharp teeth. Reports also say the creature has talons sharp and long enough to tear into a grown man without trying.

The popular theory among its fans is the creature is a Pterodactyl that has survived somehow. I'm not biologically trained so I'll leave that part up to you to decide if it really is; depending on the reports you are looking at though it does seem plausible that is what people are reporting.

Just in case you aren't familiar with what a Pterodactyl is reference the bottom picture above. It's a predator from late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 to 66 million years ago) that ruled the skies and if you were on the regular menu you didn't stand a chance of surviving as it glided from the skies to grab you before you knew what was about to happen.

One of the more interesting reported sightings is from some of the people of Papua New Guinea. From about early 1990's through today the sightings of what they are seeing have rarely changed.

In Papua New Guinea sightings are more along the lines of a Pterodactyl with smooth skin, alligator type head and a long bill that extends towards the back of their head. The locals are very afraid of the creature they see and feel that it is a Devil sent to destroy them, for anyone who doesn't know or understand locals in the area are very religious. What I would encourage anyone who reads this to remember is this, locals reported Mountain Gorillas, Coelacanth and many other species before science caught up with them. Local people are the ones "down in the trenches" so to speak, they are out in the wilds everyday gathering food and supplies and they are very familiar with their environment; if they report something we should at least pay attention before dismissing it outright.

To bring things a little closer to home let's talk about sightings in the America's. In 1890 two Cowboys reportedly killed a giant birdlike creature with a wingspan wide enough to cover an entire barn when they later brought it back to town for photographing. I'm sorry I couldn't find the newspaper clipping, this story is popular when it comes to this Cryptid, but this story is generally considered an Urban legend since no photograph can be located.

In the 1940's three individuals in Illinois spotted what they thought to be a passing plane, after they saw the plane flap its wings though they realized they were staring at something much different. A few weeks after this reported sighting another gentleman described an enormous bird flying, what he estimated to be about 500 feet in the air.

One of the most controversial reports, out of all I read, happened July 1997 when a group of boys reported that they chased by enormous birds. Most of the boys were unharmed by the encounter but one child wasn't so lucky; reportedly one of the birds clamped his talons around the boy’s shoulders and lifted him a little way off the ground before losing its grip as the boy fought for his life.
In 2002 a bird with what was estimated to be a 14ft wingspan was sighted in Alaska. Alaska is generally considered the final frontier because so much of it is unexplored, if something like this creature could be found anywhere it seems this would make the most sense it would be there.