Unidentified Flapping Objects

This episode of "MonsterQuest" is unavailable from Amazon at the present time, but can be watched for free on Youtube or purchased from Amazon together with other episodes from Season 1 on DVD.

"Birdzilla" is a program about Thunderbirds, gigantic raptors said to attack people in various parts of the United States. The Thunderbirds are supposedly much larger than condors, but no hard evidence for their existence seems to exist. Thus, the Thunderbird has the same status as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster or UFOs.

The program features both people who claim to have seen these elusive creatures, including a man who claims to have been attacked and almost abducted by a Thunderbird when he was 10 years old. The only hard piece of evidence is a film seemingly showing large black raptors flying around near a lake. Various natural explanations for the sightings are discussed. Some are relatively logical. An experiment with a "thunderbird kite" shows that people are very bad at judging size at a distance. Many Thunderbirds could be misidentified specimens of the Steller's Sea Eagle or even the Turkey Vulture. Other explanations are far-fetched in the extreme. Thus, the program discusses whether the creature that attacked the 10-year old boy was an African Crowned Eagle. Since this eagle (never found in the United States) attacks monkeys, why not other primates, such as...humans? I fail to see the logic. Can they sniff primate DNA?

Of course, natural explanations to Thunderbird sightings only work so far: some of the witnesses claimed that the mega-bird perched on a tree or phone pole, making it possible to fairly judge its (gigantic) size...

Ultimately, it's up to the viewer to decide whether Unidentified Flapping Objects are real or just another figment of our imagination...