Revealing Illinois' giant birds of '77

Legend of the Thunderbird

by Florence Cardinal The legend of the giant Thunderbird has been passed down through history for thousands of years. The Native Americans knew him well. They have celebrated the creature to the beat of the tom-toms. They have traced his outline in the petroglyphs on stone walls. Some of these drawings may date back to prehistory. They have carved his likeness into towering totem poles that tell the story of their history.. From east to west, from north to south, th...

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Giant bird sighted in San Antonio

Loch Ness has its monster. Does San Antonio have one, too? Strange sightings of a huge flying creature have been reported as recently as six months ago. Is it a monster or myth? Guadalupe Cantu III was busy working his newspaper route, but he says the big news of that day 10 years ago flew right over his car. He says he's seen what most have not — an unidentified flying object, one that still scares him. "We were afraid that it would come at us. So we stayed in the car till it passed th...

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Legend of the 5ft 'Big Bird' remains a mystery

For decades, bird lovers have flocked to the Rio Grande Valley to see a large variety of their feathered friends. But in 1976, hunters scoured the area trying to win a reward for the capture of a creature which became known to residents here as Big Bird. For about two months in the mid-1970s, Big Bird — not the friendly tall, yellow bird that loves children on Sesame Street — terrorized Valley residents.The 5-foot-tall bird was described as "horrible-looking," according to The Monitor’...

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Giant man-eating eagle actually existed

The giant man-eating "Haast"s Eagle" of New Zealand really did exist according to new research, it would have weighed up to 40lbs and is thought to have hunted flightless birds such as moa and evenhuman children."A massive man-eating bird of prey from ancient Maori legend reallydid exist, according to new research. . Scientists have known about the existence of Haast"s eagle for over a century based on excavated bones, but the ...

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Is there a stuffed Thunderbird in Ontario ?

Cryptozoologist Karl Shuker looks back at a case from 1998 in which he received information from a University Professor on a possible stuffed thunderbird being kept in the town of Spanish, Ontario. "Karl Shuker: In 1998, I received the following fascinating information of possiblerelevance to North America"s ongoing thunderbird or "big bird" mystery. . And this time it involves something much more substantial than a missin...

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Cryptozoologist mulls theories on 'Big Bird'

Hidden in the shadows outside of civilization, monsters are believed by some to exist. According to folklore, a large primate stalks the Pacific Northwest and a giant reptile lurks in the depths of a Scottish lake. And in South Texas, people carefully watch the skies for Big Bird, a flying creature that terrorized the area in 1976. “This bird’s got a habit of going after people,” said Guadalupe Cantu III, an eye witness. “This is strictly a nighttime bird, though. ... From 11 o’clock on, everybo...

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Mordor's gigantic eagles really flew

The enormous eagles that swoop down in the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings to rescue Sam and Frodo from a desolate New Zealand landscape masquerading as Mordor may not be as far-fetched as they seem. Genetic data just published provides new details of the evolution of a New Zealand eagle so big that it was near the upper limit of body weight for flight. Haast’s eagle was vast, with a wingspan of upto 3m (9ft 10in) and a weight of 15kg (33lb), but it preyed on huge flightless birds — moas — th...

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Expert tries to identify mystery bird

More sightings of a huge flying creature, originally reported by KENS, have prompted an investigation to determine if it is a monster or myth. "Even though it was dark, the thing itself was black. The blackest I"d ever seen," said Frank Ramirez. Years ago, Ramirez thought he was after a prowler in the back of his mother"s Southwest Side home. But what greeted him on the garage rooftop still gives him goosebumps now. "That"s when the thing up there turned to me, and it was in a perched state, and...

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Legend from the Pacific Northwest

Thunderbirds are one of the few cross-cultural elements of Native North American mythology. Stories of Thunderbirds are found among the Plains Indians, as well as among Pacific Northwest, the Illini, Ojibwa, and Northeastern Tribes. Thunderbird mythology is found among the Early European Tribes also, but readily apparent traces are masked by later cultures. The Quileute, sometimes spelled Quillayute, is the name of a Native American tribe living along the Quil...

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Thunderbird and Trickster

by Steve Mizrach Introduction: The Thunderbird is one of the few cross-cultural elements of Native North American mythology. He is found not just among Plains Indians, but also among Pacific Northwest and Northeastern Tribes. In this paper, moreover, I want to examine how the myths and legends of the Thunderbird tie into the sacred Trickster ritual complex of Plains tribes such as the Lakota. I will show how the Thunderbird is intimately connected to this complex, and a...

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