Gigantic Bird

I have long been fascinated by "gigantic bird" stories. There are numerous reports of enormous birds—larger than anything thought to be alive—flying the skies. 

The reports come from all over, but in some cases, it seems large migratory birds have established several north-south flight paths that run through the United States. Might these enormous birds with their twenty-foot wingspans and dark-colored plumage be teratorns that have survived into the present day? Along with these “thunderbirds” there are reports of flying reptiles with leathery wings that also stretch twenty feet or more. Again, these reports come from all over, but seem to be entrenched in the lore of the American Southwest.

While conducting some research for a project I’m working on, I ran across this description of a gigantic bird in Chile in the 1800s:

A Strange Bird.—Copiapo, Chili, April, 1868. 

Yesterday, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, when the daily labours in this mine were over, and all the workmen were together awaiting their supper, we saw coming through the air, from the side of the ternera, a gigantic bird, which at first sight we took for one of the clouds then partially darkening the atmosphere, supposing it to have been separated from the rest by the wind. Its course was from northwest to southeast; its flight rapid and in a straight line. As it was passing a short distance above our heads we could mark the, strange formation of its body. Its immense wings were clothed with a grayish plumage, its monstrous head was like that of a locust, its eyes were wide open and shone like burning coals; it seemed to be covered with something resembling the thick and stout bristles of a boar, while on its body, elongated like that of a serpent, we could only see brilliant scales, which clashed together with a metallic sound as the strange animal turned its body in its flight.

—Copiapo (Chili) paper.

The Zoologist: A Popular Miscellany of Natural History, 26, (1868), p1295.

What say you? What sort of bird was described in this report? And is this where thunderbird legends come from?

In my book, El Paso to Las Cruces via Roswell, I discuss pterosaur and teratorn sightings in the Las Cruces, New Mexico area and in west Texas.

In my book Water Monsters South of the Border, I take a look at some of the creatures in Chile that are lurking in the cold glacial lakes that dot the Patagonia Region.

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