Giant Wings of Those Giant Birds: Part 1 -Is it all True Series #251

I was maybe 5 years old, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was lying on the grass at my grandparents’ home looking up at some beautiful puffy clouds when I saw this very huge bird flying high in the sky between two of these very white clouds. It is something I would never forget as I still remember it 58 years ago. It was as big as an aircraft, which is what I first thought it was, but when the wings started to flap I knew it was a bird.
I lived in Tucson for about three years and I knew a pilot who would fly the border between Arizona and Mexico for a government agency, I guess for drug recon. He told me on one particularly bright sunny day, he was flying a small single engine and off to his right there was a huge bird nearly the size of his plane. It turned and looked him in the eye and then veered to its right into the cloud deck. He thought he was flying about 175 miles per hour at the time of the incident. He was visibly shaken even as he told me the story weeks after.
I have talked to many different American Indians over the years about their thunderbird legend. And the description is quite consistent between the tribes. The bird has a 12 to 20 foot wingspan, dark in color, very large beak and fierce red glowing eyes. The eyes have an almost human quality to them. These thunderbirds would take a sheep or two, a dog and legend said a child or two would go missing never to be found.
Another personal encounter with these huge creatures was about 3 years ago while I was doing some exploring east of Albuquerque in the mountains. I was in a dense forest canopy, and I walked into an opening and started hearing this strange loud flapping noise and looked up and saw this huge dark figure passing over the clearing. It was quick, but I could make out the size and shape, the size of a small plane flapping its wings.
Sleep tight, for 99.8% of the time our bird encounters are of the small kind, but it’s the .2% of the time that makes life quite exciting
MWiz.