Thread: Big Bird moved from Sesame Street to Alaska?

Bird the Size of a Plane Spotted in Alaska?


Oct 18, 8:26 am ET

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A bird the size of a small airplane was recently spotted flying over southwest Alaska, puzzling scientists, the Anchorage Daily News reported this week.
The newspaper quoted residents in the villages of Togiak and Manokotak as saying the creature, like something out of the movie "Jurassic Park," had a wingspan of 14 feet -- making it the size of a small airplane.

"At first I thought it was one of those old-time Otter planes," the paper quoted Moses Coupchiak, 43, a heavy equipment operator from Togiak, as saying. "Instead of continuing toward me, it banked to the left, and that's when I noticed it wasn't a plane."

The Daily News, the largest daily in Alaska, said scientists had no doubt that people in the region, west of Dillingham, had seen the winged creature but they were skeptical about its reported size.

"I'm certainly not aware of anything with a 14-foot wingspan that's been alive for the last 100,000 years," the paper quoted raptor specialist Phil Schemf as saying.

Coupchiak said the bird disappeared over the hill and he then radioed Togiak residents to tell them to keep their children in.

Another local resident, a pilot who had initially dismissed the reports, said he recently saw the bird from a distance of just 1,000 feet while flying his airplane.

"The people in the plane saw him," John Bouker was quoted as saying. "He's huge, he's huge, he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out."

Schemf and Rob Macdonald of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said there had been several sightings over the past year and a half of a Steller's eagle, a fish-eating bird that can weigh 20 pounds (10 kg) and have a wingspan of eight feet, the newspaper reported

i read that!!!! was it remote controlled?

The witnesses say it is a real bird.

ahhh i thought it was paper! sheesh!

http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/1979660p-2081808c.html

Tale of big bird catches some air
SOUTHWEST: Letterman, radio stations have some fun with Alaska sighting.


By Peter Porco
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: October 18, 2002)
A newspaper story this week about the sightings of a large bird in Southwest Alaska turned out to have wings.

The tale of villagers seeing an eaglelike bird with a wingspan as long as a Dodge van brought dozens of e-mails from readers in Alaska and the Lower 48 and one from the Netherlands.

The online newsmagazine Drudge Report posted links. The San Diego FM radio program "Smooth Jazz" talked it up. And David Letterman joked about it.

John Bouker, the Dillingham pilot who saw the bird while flying into Manokotak recently and who was mentioned in the story, said he was getting "bummed out" from all the calls he received from news organizations.

"They're calling from all over the world," Bouker said Thursday. "The London Telegraph, a Los Angeles radio station, Seattle TV -- I could go on and on and on."

Some people have written to the paper to say they know what the folks in Manokotak and Togiak have really seen around the hills and valleys west of Dillingham in recent weeks.

"I believe this is a possible Dragon Sighting," wrote "Anonoumous." "I believe that it is a Northern Ice Dragon."

People who, like Bouker, have actually seen the bird have said it is like an eagle but enormous, with a wingspan of up to 14 feet. Even people who say the bird is more modestly sized still say it is huge.

Scientists were somewhat skeptical. They said the bird could be a Steller's sea eagle, one of the largest eagles, a creature native to northeast Asia and sometimes seen in Alaska but whose wingspan is not known to exceed 8 feet.

But to some e-mailers, what do the biologists know?

"There was a recent sighting of a giant raptor in the Coastal Bend region" of Texas, writes a woman from the Houston-Galveston area. "Don't let the scientists blow this off. It could be the biological discovery of the century."

"There's a theory that these are relict (sic) teratorns, the giant scavenger bird that is found widespread in Pleistocene deposits," one man wrote. "Obviously, biologists don't like the idea of a large bird they don't know about."

On Wednesday night's show, David Letterman flapped his arms during his monologue and said Alaska has nothing to compare with New York. The TV screen then showed the image of a giant winged rat over Manhattan's Central Park.

A writer from Palmer said a large bird showed up early last week.

"As I was driving to work on Bodenburg Loop in Palmer I saw a huge object in the sky looking like it was coming in for a landing," the person wrote. "As I got closer and it came across the river and got lower, I realized that it was not a plane but a very, very large bird."

Similar sightings have taken place apparently in Illinois, where a mother had to smack the giant bird so it would drop her child from its beak; Erie, Pa.; and Evanston, Wyo. A North Carolina author and other people said the bird could be the famed Thunderbird of Native American legend.

Another author said his book "Hollow Planets" advances "the theory of an unknown/suppressed island in the Arctic" and implied the bird may originate from there.

A man remembers an astonishing sight as he crossed the equator on a troop transport in 1944.

"It was not a sea bird in any form," he writes. "I did some research just a few years ago to try to determine what I had seen. I came onto some information on a flying animal called a Pteradon, which is of the Pteradactyl family. These animals are thought to be extict over 150,000 years ago."

Despite the skepticism of some people, Bouker, the Dillingham pilot, said he knows what he has seen and agrees with some scientists that it's likely a Steller's sea eagle.

"People in Alaska can appreciate this stuff," Bouker said, adding that those in the Lower 48 cannot understand Great Land dimensions. "In Alaska, we see big birds, big moose, big fish, things you don't see down south."

Reporter Peter Porco can be reached at [email protected] and at 907-257-4582.

I got these off of the AP, and the Anchorage Daily Newspaper...I just post what I found...I have no idea whether it is true or not...would be cool though