While our eyes are turned to the sky this summer with mass UFO sightings, we should also be on the lookout for another type of UFO in the sky: reportedly giant birds.

An event that occurred 33 years ago triggered a period of mass sightings of the mythical Thunderbird.

On July 25, 1977, three little boys were playing in a Lawndale, Illinois back yard when two giant birds swooped down on them. Two of the boys ran away, but the birds shifted their focus toward the third boy: ten-year-old Marlon Lowe.

One of the birds clamped onto the boy’s shoulders and reportedly attempted to fly off with him. The boy was reportedly lifted two feet off the ground by the bird before he fought back against it, which caused the bird to lose its grip on him. Some accounts report that the boy was lifted up to ten feet off the ground.

The good news is that the boy escaped the clutches of the bird.

“Thunderbird is a term used in cryptozoology to describe large, bird-like creatures, generally identified with the Thunderbird of Native American tradition. Similar cryptids reported in the Old World are often called Rocs. Thunderbirds are regarded by a small number of researchers as having lizard features like the extinct pterosaurs such as Pteranodon. Although reports of Thunderbird sightings go back centuries, due to the lack of scientific evidence (such as a fossil record), the creature is generally regarded as a myth.”- Source: Wikipedia

Thunderbirds haven’t escaped the clutches of the media, especially in the Grand Canyon State. The earliest known published account of a giant bird can be found in a Tombstone, Arizona newspaper.

In April of 1890, two cowboys were said to have killed one. The men said it had the face of an alligator, smooth skin and featherless bat-like wings. The description matched that of a prehistoric pterodactyl.

A photograph of the dead Thunderbird was said to have been published in the Tombstone Epitaph.

However, searches through the paper’s archive for a photo have proved to be as illusive as the Thunderbird itself. Archives do not reveal a photograph, but simply an article about a dead bird with a 16-foot wingspan.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 6:45 am and is filed under Life, Monsters. Tags for this post: cryptozoology, UFO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.