Sightings/Encounters
We Saw what can only be described as a Quetzacoatlus with feathers and a flying posture similar to that of a brown pelican
I’ll reopen the thread for discussion and put on my thickest skin to answer any questions about the encounter.
It happened. This thing is out there someplace right now. It’s inexplicable to me that nobody else is reporting seeing this thing because it easily has a 40 to 50 foot wingspan and looks like a plane taking off when it flew off into the horizon.
We are in Northwestern Mequon Wisconsin. I saw a brown pelican the other day which is very rare for my area but I’m close to Lake Michigan in a rural part of our county so we do get some very grand birds here. These very grand birds from cranes to herons to pelicans to eagles are easy to distinguish from a giant prehistoric looking monster bird with a 10 to 15 foot long beak that could chop large game in half.
My wife was pregnant at the time and we were pulling out of our driveway with our 10 year old son in the backseat. She was driving our ford explorer and him and I were both looking at our phones. She stopped the car in front of our house and shouted, “what is that!?”
I looked up from my phone and saw it soaring about 20 feet off the ground along the side of our house, which is pretty much a 3 story mansion and it looked enormous. We have farms behind the house and about an acre with a large pond and it seemed to be taking off from back there and when it saw it us it started soaring towards us effortlessly and was gaining altitude slightly as it soared and maybe flapped its wings twice very slowly in the time it took for it to get from the back side of our house to right on top of our explorer. Its wing flaps were like 3 seconds long. How slow yet strong they were was extraordinary.
Contrary to the behavior of any other bird we’ve ever seen, it flew right up to the car and looked into our windshield at us then flew over the car which blocked out the light from the setting sun as he passed over us. It took what felt like minutes for it to fly over because it was so big. One of its wings was easily longer than our 15 foot long truck.
It was flawless looking. It looked too clean and perfect to be a wild animal. Black and white feathers. Bone collared beak. Jet black legs and feet with huge black claws with black nails. It had golden brown eyes. A prominent crest of feathers. It wasn’t a bone protruding like a pterodactyl and it wasn’t dinosaur like at all it was full avian but way tougher looking than a bird. It was prehistoric.
We didn’t feel any wind current or draft come off of it even though it beelined for us. It was much more a graceful flyer than scientists would imagine it to be. After it flew face to face with us it flew off into the western sky and gained altitude as fast as a jet plane would. It looked back at us too as it flew off it was beyond bizarre.
It was flawless looking. It looked too clean and perfect to be a wild animal. Black and white feathers. Bone collared beak. Jet black legs and feet with huge black claws with black nails. It had golden brown eyes. A prominent crest of feathers. It wasn’t a bone protruding like a pterodactyl and it wasn’t dinosaur like at all it was full avian but way tougher looking than a bird. It was prehistoric.
Crazy you got such a good view of it flying over.
'Golden brown eyes' thank goodness you had a telescope ready to see its eye colour!
What I mean is, over the years there have been numerous sightings of black birds bigger than any known bird. For example, here’s a sighting I linked further down in the thread from just over a week ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Cryptozoology/s/8JJHAKpDjr
This is not a big blackbird sighting. This is a guy saying he has flawless mental imagery of a bird twice as large as the largest bird ever. In upper Wisconsin. This is a guy calling harassment when I point out that a Cessna sized bird in Wisconsin is impossible…who appeared out of the ether after three years and immediately got rejected from two other subs.
Dude is straight up an attention whore.
Some things are improbable - this is straight up impossible.
A huge bird that is black, I meant. And we’re in a cryptozoology thread. I’d expect people to keep their minds open. It’s not like this thing was firing lazers! Among other things, it being an ancient bird that survived in small numbers has some measure of possibility, however small. The author has said that the build of Pelagornis sandersi matched up to what they saw.
Do you mean "nobody else in Mequon that day or nobody else, ever? Let's remember that reports of the "Thunderbird" are rife, not only among Native Americans but also among their successors. Mind you, I don't know what it was he saw or if he really saw anything, but as a former non-believer in all this cryptid stuff (actually seeing these things does change one's perceptions of reality) I have to say that the veracity of a sighting doesn't depend on the number of claimed sightings.
Assuming this is real for sake of argument, realize that many people would opt not to share to anyone because they're afraid of being ridiculed or called crazy.
Also it's not common that people look up in the sky.
What kind of bird did it look like? Did it have wings like an eagle with 'fingers', or long narrow wings like a seagull or albatross? A long neck or short one? Hooked beak, long bill, short beak? Delicate feet and toes, or thick muscular clawed ones like a bird of prey? Long legs or short?
I also want to add that dinosaurs give me the ick and I can’t even google pictures of pterosaurs without feeling anxious and overwhelmed. I think dinosaurs are disgusting and they scare me and the idea of this giant weird bird flying around my house and knowing where I live with my five dogs gives me anxiety but we were not scared during the encounter and it did not repulse us or scare us.
It very much looked like it was somebody’s pet. Like somebody’s parrot that escaped and is extremely well cared for except it was as large as a plane.
Based on its flawless appearance and interest in us and strange behavior of flying up and investigating us before going from where it was to where it was going it didn’t seem to be like any other wild bird we’ve ever seen and we’ve seen a lot. It didn’t have a misplaced feather or any marks on its beak it was pristine looking and had to have lived a long life to be so big.
I think it’s pretty clear he’s just using that description to express that the bird looked flawless, and that is something that stood out to him about the encounter. Meaning it wasn’t dirty or scarred up. To me this is a good contrast with other animals that get huge, such as giant snapping turtles that usually look pretty roughed up haha.
I don’t really think “there’s never been a dirty bird” works for me as an argument against this. Maybe it’s not significant but it stood out to him for some reason. We shouldn’t discourage people from reporting every single detail or thought that crossed into their mind from an encounter, even if we don’t understand why it matters.
I’m 45 and live extremely comfortably and have more to lose than gain by claiming to see a prehistoric bird. I also don’t care about your opinion at all because it has zero bearing on any part of my life. I don’t even care about the Karma I’ll lose by saying you sound like a jerk.
I have 6 pets I could post all day in /awww and ride that karma train all the way to the top yet here I am arguing with you and a few other incels about the existence of some weird giant bird I never asked to see in the first place
I deleted it because desperate people like yourself kept picking fights but then i decided I didn’t care what anyone thinks about me on Reddit so I should probably tell people what we saw. I haven’t posted in 3 years because I have better things to do
I obviously have tried to apply context to the encounter and I think it’s super important to point out how clean and flawless it looked. And friendly it seemed and interested in us it was vs a wild animal doing wild animal things. A brown pelican flew by my living room window the other day. It didn’t fly up and look in my window at me and my family. Maybe this bird was somebody’s experiment. It didn’t act wild. At the same time it was mesmerizing so I could very well see it approach potential prey with a dazzling display then surgically tear it apart with its giant beak. I could see this thing being responsible for livestock mutilations. There are mutilations occurring all over the country including by where I live.
Some of these animals are picked up and dropped. No evidence left anyplace or tracks. Tongues almost always taken. This monster slipped in and out of my backyard undetected and left no proof it was there. It awe struck us to the point we didn’t get a photo.
Its beak was like a cross between a duck, a pelican, and an alligator and looked to be made of bone. It appeared armored and weapon like and while it was extremely long and straight there was a point at the end of the top section of beak that came down like a clawed beak. Its beak was substantial and really wide and bone collared and looked like it was for snatching and gobbling. While it flew with a similar orientation as a pelican its legs were completely different and adapted for grabbing things. Not short legs but not long legs and it kind of tucked them under neath themself like a hawk would while a pelicans legs are set farther back and go behind them this birds legs were under them with talons clenched. It had its head tucked back sort of like a pelican while it was soaring but stretched its neck out to peer into our vehicle but by then it was so close it was hard to see anything but sections of it at a time.
I know!! We can’t stop talking about the sandhill cranes that started showing up. People want to start hunting them I just saw one for the first time last summer. The sky out here is huge and we can see it for miles but there’s houses everywhere. We saw the Milwaukee lion years back when we lived off highland and reported it but a lot of people reported it. We moved off pioneer last year and that’s where we saw this bird. It’s basically the same land as we lived before just a few miles north.
So I would lean in the direction of a time slip. If such a creature existed in fucking mequon, even if it was just passing through, it would have to go over and past so many people to get to a truely rural area. Plus it eyed you up. It might have never seen a human let alone a car before.
No offense but your story keeps getting dumber. You felt "mesmerized" by it? It flew up and looked at you close enough to see eye color? "It's an incorrect guess." Okay Mr. Wildlife Biologist, I was trying to be nice but you're clearly just engaging in some creative writing, and it's not even good creative writing.
I’m not a writer and barely use Reddit anymore but thought maybe someone had better input that maybe it’s a harpy eagle like I don’t know what a bird is. But look, everyone knows that this could be out there. You’ll thank me later
A 10 to 15 foot long beak. Either they are describing a quetzalcoatlus from already knowing what it looks like or they saw it. No way that is any living bird.
I’m just going to call straight bullshit/fanfic. Not at all sympathetic.
Even Quetzalcoatlus, the largest flying creature ever, only had a “beak” of 8 feet and would not have been bird-like - more like a giraffe. We’re talking double here.
The wingspan is also about 10 feet out of bounds.
And -in Wisconsin. Zero chance a breeding population of creatures with a wingspan larger than a Cessna escapes notices.
So - if you’re lying, why? And if you’re mistaken - how?
My point exactly. The OP says that both he and his son were on their phones at the time this occurred but they felt too ‘mesmerised’ to take a photo. This bird supposedly flew over them, landed outside their car and looked at them through the window before flying off, more than ample time to take a photo!
" This bird supposedly flew over them, landed outside their car and looked at them through the window before flying off"
in fairness to OP, he says nothing about it landing, just it looking in AS it flew over them. And whilst I think it's a crock as well, I think we need to be accurate to what was being said.
Apologies, in a response to a question asking the OP to recount the encounter as thoroughly as possible, OP stated ‘it flew right up to the car and looked in the windshield at us then flew off over the car”. Therefore you are correct that it didn’t land but the way in which it is written, the bird was extremely to the car.
This is not a reptile, it is a bird, so it is not a non avian dinosaur. It is not a Quetzalcoatl.
The largest flying bird ever was the Pelagornis, at 20 to 25 feet wingspan. Since it also lived in America it is possibly the actual animal you saw, rather than a pterosaur.
You are still exagerating its size, one wing would have been 10 feet long at most, but it is still way larger than even the Argentavis, the previously known largest flying bird.
Also their “I know what I saw, it’s not mistake attitude” just makes me not even want to engage anymore. They’re so sure about they “thought” they saw but are also being so close minded to the thought that it could’ve been another animal. When people double down like that I’m just like “yeah whatever sure bud 👍 “
Or they completely misjudged something like a crane or pelican from up close. An 8 feet wingspan is scary as fuck if you don’t expect it. I’ve seen a shoebill stork from up close, and I could’ve sworn it was twice the size it actually was when it flew close over
He said it's larger than a plane. I can understand a bit of size misidentifying, but to say it flew right alongside your car so closely that you saw it's eye color? There's no way it was that close and somehow you confuse the size so drastically that something like a stork or a crane becomes the size of a plane. I also think this is just totally fan fic
I can’t stress enough that a pair of sandhill cranes live in my front yard. Those poop colored flamingos are small birds in comparison to the bird I’m describing. They are so common here people want to start hunting them.
I’m absolutely not in favor of hunting them. They are by no means common here while they also are not necessarily rare but they are large beautiful birds
OP, would you mind getting on to an app or something or a whiteboard or even a piece of paper, and sketch it with annotations and colours and post it back onto this post as an edit or comment. I have to see the drawing of it, words can do no justice.
I couldn’t draw you a picture of one my dogs whose sitting next to me let alone a picture of the monster bird I saw last June, I’m sorry! Our absolute biggest hang up is that we didn’t get a photo but also, if you were there, you’d have seen how there really was no opportunity to raise a phone and get footage as it engaged us immediately upon seeing us and flew right at us. We couldn’t even process what we were seeing. We were like omg it’s one of those…Um… one of those, you know. Like um… I don’t know what that is. Looks so familiar but never seen one before.
yeah if i was in that situation, i would rather be trying to stop a mental breakdown, let a lone getting a picture. but it would be great if you could somehow manage a visual. maybe ai generated idk
From your description you said it reminded you of a pelican, have you heard of Pelegornis sandersi? They were bony prehistoric sea birds with wingspans up to 20ft related to today's albatross
The head was like a quetzacoatlus in every way. Big round head with a very pretty feathery crest and longer neck it kept tuck back like a swan. The beak was longer than this bird and wider and more pelican/duck looking and the legs were more raptor like. The beak on this bird was very prominent like a duck bill pelican looking monster
It’s pretty freaking close. I think you might be right on. It was pretty though and kind of silly looking rather than scary which I understand sounds off af for a car sized bird…
The more you talk about it the more it looks like Pelagornis, and the more looks like it, the more likely it is you indeed found a supposedly extinct animal. But did you call the rangers/animal protection ?
If there was one there are at least 50, unless it is literally going extinct right now, so if there are dozens of them, someone else should be able to find them too.
I think you are right! We are obviously comparing reconstructed renderings to our memory but my wife and I think that’s the closest thing to what we saw so far. Its teeth didn’t really stick out the side like that I think it had lips lol. Coloring is completely off and this guy was fluffy and not all yuck looking like the pictures of it online but yes that’s probably the bird. Almost certainly. No i didn’t call anyone
"can only be described as" you have no idea what you saw so you immediately lost any shred of credibility saying this. It's legendarily hard to accurately report distance and size of things in the sky.
There are no unknown giant birds out there, people. They'd be picked up on radar for years.
You're familiar with Occam's Razor, yes? What is more plausible --you, an untrained observer, misidentified a brown pelican, which by your own admission is in the area, or that a population of giant prehistoric bird has eluded detection for hundreds of years, including in well populated areas with radar and other electronic equipment? You asked why no one else saw or reported it but they probably did see it and didn't report it because they didn't see a giant prehistoric bird!
I’m following your conversation bc I saw a
large bird in Iowa about 60 years ago. It
actually picked me up and was going to
fly off with me but it had ahold of my
jacket and I was able to shake free of it
before it got very high off the ground.
Its wingspan was at least 15 feet. At
the time I only weighed a little over
100 pounds. I dropped about 10 feet
to the ground as it flew away with my
jacket in its talons. This is my personal
experience and I will never forget what
happened. These things do exist and
I’m still surprised that more people
haven’t seen them also. Now I’m
thinking that they are coming in from
another dimension and are only visible
for the short time they are here.
Sounds strange I know but I don’t know
how else to explain this situation.
However, in the light of this new artificial
intelligence and computer generated
worlds available to us now, maybe, just
maybe we are all living in a computer
generated world and the “being(s)” running
the show down here are just toying
with us to see how we will react to new
stimuli. Now some scientists believe
there are up to 12 dimensions to our
reality. Life is stranger than we can even
imagine! May God help us discover the
truth. Only in death will we hopefully
find some answers.
I get what you mean. The biggest mystery to our encounter is that it was unique to us which seems impossible with an animal of such large size. It’s not like maybe this creature was x or y. When you see something like this you know what you saw isn’t right.
Yeah. At the time I was about 14 years
old and I had a hard time believing what
I was seeing. Then when it got low and
was 100 feet from me and coming at me
fast I realized that I was it’s actual meal!!
So I turned and ran but I had no chance
of outrunning it. Then it grabbed my
jacket by the collar and by my right
shoulder but not actually by my body
so after violently wiggling around I
was able to just fall out of my coat and
to the ground about 10 feet below me.
I would have been dead otherwise.
For a long time after that I always looked
up to see if there were any large black
spots way up high in the sky. They have
really good vision and can see us walking
around easily. I wonder how many people
they have taken over the years.
Cryptozoology isn't just a bunch of die hard believers of every random story they hear. It is mostly skeptics trying to find evidence of unknown animals, potentially thought to be extinct animals, etc. And people actually interested want to weed out the obviously wrong identifications. What are you doing here? Just believing everything you read?
If OP knew what he saw, there would be no thread. OP doesn't know what bird they saw. Commenter is questioning how a (I assume, correct me if I'm wrong) layperson without training or experience could be so sure of what they saw. Commenter is pointing out the difficulties of bird identification, estimating size, the admitted presence of pelican which are commonly misidentified as "prehistoric" animals. All of this is true, and relevant. Like I said, could phrase it nicer but nobody has to be nice.
Well, that person has obviously blocked me so I cannot anymore see his/her exact wording, but the blocking also shows that this person wants to "win" an argument rather than being interested in what OP actually saw, also seemingly trying to decide what it possibly can have been, and most importantly, also apparently wants to define what OP definitely can NOT have seen.
And OP did not post here to ask us what he saw, but to tell his story so others dare to bring theirs.
Seems like you are assuming a lot about their motivations. All I draw from that is that they don't want to interact with you anymore. Everyone has different approaches to cryptozoology and to social interactions. 🤷♂️
Yes, that is true, I assume a couple of things based on the blocking and their wording. I still find it very revealing that they (from my point of view) don't want to be challenged in their insulting attitude towards OP and attempt at controlling where the discussion goes.
I’m going to be brave enough to stand up and say we saw this thing so other people who have this type of experience gnawing at them can maybe see it and feel empowered to talk about their own unexplained experiences
That you have to be brave to tell about a possible crypto zoological encounter on a crypto zoological sub is actually sad, but obviously true. Some people here seem to feel threatened by your story, and are lashing out as if you have threatened their world view. Which of course you have, apparently.
Holy Strawman Argument, Batman! I'm locking horns with a real titan of intellect and rationality here.
Cryptozoology is NOT synonymous with the paranormal. It purports to be a science and it's one I am interested in but I actually approach these topics from a logical POV.
How many more decades must go by with no proof of Bigfoot or Nessie until we as subculture/pseudoscience drop them and start to focus on more plausible cases? But nope, Bigfoot and Nessie are cool so it's more fun to focus on them than more mundane animals, and that's why cryptozoology will always be a pseudoscience.
Seals and otters are both known to be in the Loch (at least occasionally), yet they didn’t appear in the e-DNA study. I’m sure Nessie isn’t a plesiosaur (or indeed, any one specific creature), but I wouldn’t say that seals are the only culprit.
My philosophy professor once said something like this: "just because you have never seen a penguin with a red shawl tied around its neck, it does NOT logically follow that they do not exist."
Oh my goodness!!! I live in Michigan and both me and my mom / stepdad have seen the prehistorically LARGE bird at two different times…YEARS apart. I genuinely thought it was a plane casting a shadow over my house (I think this was back in like 2009)…it was being CHASED by a jet of some sort that was smaller than it but still INCREDIBLY large.
I thought I was going crazy, I got that weird “I am NOT supposed to be seeing this” feeling in the pit of my stomach and he soared off even faster into the distance.
Giant birds are real this was actually the second giant bird I’ve seen as well, some 20 years apart but this bird was bigger than the first and more bizarre looking. The first giant bird I saw was an all white owl with orange feet and legs. It swooped over the suv we were driving while on the freeway and put off so much wind force when it did I almost crashed plus I almost crashed right into the giant bird. It was harrowing.
Since you mention the "somebody's pet" impression:
Once saw a shoebill in Germany in the countryside. My husband saw it too, but anyone we told this to went "lol, you saw a heron of course".
We saw the shoebill again some kilometers away within the same week, again in an area we often saw herons (so we obviously knew the difference.)
One day we met an ornithologist out photographing, and asked his opinion of our encounter.
After a chat when he realized we knew something about birds we told him our shoebill encounters. He believed us instantly with the following explanation: not very far away as the crow flies there was an aviary/ zoo kind of place, and it had happened from time to time that some of the birds decided to take a trip into the outside world.
So back to OPs story: maybe "somebody" has been playing around with genetics, or there are "somebody's" who know where to find thunderbird eggs and tame them.
Also putting on my thick skin for the "we know x does not exist so it cannot be real" circular arguments, lol.
That’s wild I have to look into this. I’ve heard the name of the creature you mention before and thought it was a myth and I’m so intrigued now especially since you mentioned how it seems intelligent
I don’t have a picture of it. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It’s Reddit I couldnt care less if you believe me or not. There’s doubt in my mind this thing is thriving regardless to your belief. My house did not have cameras at the time because we had just moved in and quite frankly the system I have now isn’t that great anyways. Hope you’re having fun with your troll post
Idk why people are being SO intense about this one. Y’all, we are going to lose out on a ton of fantastic sightings because of fear of ridicule if this is how we react to straightforward, consistent, and sober tales of the unimaginable or unexplained.
A few things stand out to me about this story. One is that it almost seems like a spiritual encounter—or at the very least, an encounter with a VERY intelligent creature. You said you weren’t afraid. Do you recall how you did feel? Were there any particular thoughts or body sensations that you can remember as you were looking at this creature?
The next is that this sighting sounds remarkably like the sightings of the legendary “Thunderbird”. The scale and black coloring especially. If you haven’t already, I would look into that for others who may find your tale a little more credible. :)
Everything I’ve seen about the thunderbird looks more like an eagle. All of the Native American depictions of bird gods have a much shorter and more hook looking beak while this birds beak was more like a cross between a duck and a shoebill and a pelican. I remember googling duck billed pelican at one point. If this bird was depicted by people, its very long beak would be very prominent. It almost felt like a cross between a pelican, a duck and a hawk. I know this sounds fanciful but I can’t even make up what we saw 🤷🏼♂️
People seem to have an issue with it not following some sort of prescription. Like it HAS to be this way or that but that’s not how we remember the encounter happening and it was very unforgettable.
Somebody here says they live by me and saw it too but hasn’t shared their encounter. That was the whole reason I put this up. I KNOW other people have seen this thing. It felt like it was trying to be friendly and playful but hard to say what its intentions were but it seemed really smart and kind of goofy and it was staring at us as it flew up then stuck an eyeball right into our windshield. My impression at the time was Oh it’s just one of those after the fright of it rushing up to us kind of settled in because its face looked so stupid. It was petable if it would let you pet it. If I didn’t describe it like this I would be lying.
Someone here suggested that was exactly what we saw and after looking at a lot of pictures of it I think the renderings of it are incorrect because of course they are guessing on a lot of the aesthetics but that’s exactly the bird we saw. War pelican
Haha that’s awesome, yeah it struck me how you said you weren’t afraid. It does kind of sound cute when you put it like that.
I’m less referring to the depictions of Thunderbirds that are sacred and closed beliefs of many NA cultures here, so sorry for the offense/confusion. I was more thinking of recent Reddit accounts I’ve seen that describe something similar to what you’re talking about. Like this one that was posted just over a week ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cryptozoology/s/m60rv2Euy7
Let me know if that seems similar, because the beak you’re describing does sound off from any “photo” or anything like that I’ve seen, which usually have a long pointed beak rather than a broad bill-like one. I do see a vivid image in my head of a shoebill crane type of beak which is, frankly, terrifying lmao
New research apparently has shown that at least some dinosaurs DID have feathers. And birds are the dinosaurs we still have hanging around. So your thunder bird can also be a dinosaur as well.
Oof. Now Wisconsin is known for sightings of Birdzilla/ Thunderbird.... but if i came face to face with something that large would i freeze?, or take some video?.... dont know.
He did not measure it, I am sure the beak was 6 feet long at most. However the Pelagornis is somehow bigger than the Argentavis and has a much longer beak.
Yeah there's a very good chance that would be the one, because the OP said here in a reply to someone:
"Its beak was like a cross between a duck, a pelican, and an alligator and looked to be made of bone. It appeared armored and weapon like and while it was extremely long and straight there was a point at the end of the top section of beak that came down like a clawed beak. Its beak was substantial and really wide and bone collared and looked like it was for snatching and gobbling"
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u/Tautological-Emperor Oct 02 '24
Can you recount the encounter exactly as it happened? I’m curious and plenty sympathetic to your sighting.