Thunderbird sighting reported.

This is from Dallas Tanner's blog:

Hello Mr. Tanner,

I emailed you from you web site also. At the top of the Contact form you ask people to select Email CC to send you a copy... I couldn't find that on the form so I'm sending my story in a separate email, I hope you don't mind.

My sighting was many years ago but I remember it like it was a few minutes ago, it's not every day one sees a giant bird and is afraid to tell anyone because you know what the story will sound like (campfire ghost tales). I'm not sure what compelled me to contact you. Maybe just finally having someone to tell who won't think I'm nuts and/or maybe after reading about the more recent sightings I feel that this information will be useful in mapping the movements of these magnificent raptors. If you compare the other email I sent you today you'll notice that I have made a few changes in this one. These changes don't change the story or the facts of my sighting, they have been added to better describe the event of that morning.

So, here goes...

I've been reading the stories of Thunderbird sightings and I believe I saw one of these birds in central Nevada in January, 1981. I have only told a couple of people this story because I didn't want to be labeled "the crazy UFO / Giant Bird lady". I saw the bird on the side of Hwy. 376 a few miles from Round Mountain, Nevada. Because of heavy snow and ice in the winter and heavy rains in the spring, Nevada's highways are elevated with deep ditches along the sides for run-off. It was in one of these ditches that I saw the bird.

I was a passenger in a small Dodge truck (a D-50) at about 7 am, there was a fresh blanket of aprox 6 to 8 inches of snow. The road hadn't been plowed yet so I was looking out the window admiring how pristine it all was. At first I though the bird was someone stranded on the side of the road but if it was human it appeared to be wearing a strange feathered cloak of some sort. That's what alerted me to the strangeness of what I was seeing! It was standing fully in the ditch and it behaved as if it had a fresh kill under it's feet.

It gave a little hop like eagles do when they are trying to adjust their grasp but it didn't hop high enough for me to see it's feet. It did spread it's wings slightly for balance when it hopped and I could see that they were enormous. It was a shiny (but not what I would call glossy) chestnut brown color and was large enough that I could see the texture of it's feathers. It looked like a Golden Eagle, of which are abundant in Nevada, but it's head and shoulders(?) appeared close to the size of my own!

It was actually standing so that it's head was about level with my own and I was in a truck and the bird was standing at the bottom of a ditch at least 4 or 5 feet deep! It dipped it's head once toward it's feet but it's back was to me so I could only see a small bit of it's head between the back of the scull and the eye when it came up from that dip. I could just make out the indentation at the outer edge of the eye socket. I never saw it's face. A few days later when the clouds broke and the snow started to melt I went back to the sight.

There was signs of a fairly fresh kill. The remains had obviously been that of a mule deer (they are about the size of a small horse). The scull, shoulders, spine and pelvis, a few rib bones, bloody hair and tissue were scattered around. What ever the giant bird left behind was being taken care of by the local scavengers. I was nineteen years old and about three months into my first pregnancy so my husband was focussed on the road. He was maneuvering our truck through unplowed snow and ice so he didn't see the bird.

I didn't tell him what I saw until many years later when we were watching n unsolved mystery type show on TV with our children. I don't think he ever believed me and he and my children are the only ones I've ever mentioned it to. Until I watched the TV program I thought maybe I was the only one who had ever seen this. I even thought that maybe it was the only bird of its kind, some sort of weird experiment or something (we lived fairly close to Nevada's Nuclear Test Site)

Thank you for letting me share this with you.

Sincerely,

Rhonda (Last Name Withheld)
source: http://webpages.charter.net/dltanner/thunderbirds.htm

Interesting and similar to another sighting from a truck by Lewis Ostrander in 2002 also on Dallas Tanners blog. Dallas Tanner is an author of some books on cryptid subjects and a lecturer. Worth a look at his blog, lots of interesting stuff for those who like cryptozoology.