Alabama Flying Creature

From an eyewitness in Dekalb County, Alabama:

Ok so me and my buddy were outside on the porch . . . this thing flys over tree top level . . . the moon was out and bright tonight and his flood light was on which lit up the belly of this creature. . . . this thing [had] a bat-like shape with the break in the wings like bats have. . . . the belly [was] . . . whitish in color . . . [It had] no feathers . . . more like hair.

There was two [flying creatures]. . . . We heard a call from the other [one], out of sight. The sound these things made was like nothing I have ever heard. It's hard to explain how it sounded really, not a bird-like call . . . kind of a long rumbling growling.

. . . I am positive this thing had no tail feathers on it. . . . sky was clear and moon was bright; the outline was easily seen. . . . The body shape was too elongated to be a owl; it had none of its characteristics. . . . I . . . know the birds very well . . . but I know what it was not and am very sure of what I seen, and I was not the only [eyewitness] so that tells me something.

. . . the wings were solid: no feather points coming off them, just the break I associated with a bat wing, but very big in size . . .

. . . it was not a crane. I am familiar with them as I seen them when fishing all the time. I also know their calls . . . they are very large but none of the features . . . this animal had relates to a crane, neither does the sound . . .

The above was reported on the site "Above Top Secret," beginning on October 28, 2009, from the person labeled "OpTiMuS_PrImE."
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Pterosaurs in Georgia

For years people in Georgia have seen flying things unlike birds, sometimes creatures with long tails and no feathers and too big to be a bat.
 

Manta Ray Different From Pterosaur

A Manta ray fish, of an ocean or sea, may jump as high as ten feet above the surface, perhaps. But all those jumping fish fall back into the sea, demonstrating that they are not strange featherless flying creatures.
 

Pterosaur Encountered in Alabama

"My husband and I saw one in Alabama a few years ago. . . . I have no doubt this is what it was. My husband and I said it looked like a dinosaur. It was flying in front of our car across an open highway. Its wingspan was probably between 8-10 feet."

Did a Bird Grab a Baby?

Can a large bird of prey pick up a human baby? It may depend on not just the size of the bird but the size of the baby. All such speculations may appear irrelevant, however, regarding the Youtube video titled "Golden Eagle Snatches Kid." That video was created by students at a design college in Montreal, Canada.

The pedestrian at upper right pays no attention to the "attack"

 

Before the announcement, by students of Centre NaD, that the video was an animation project, skeptics began looking for signs of a hoax. It didn't take many days to find clues.

In one frame, part of the bird's wing is missing; in another, the bird's shadow is missing. After a number of days, I had found many clues myself, most critical being the gross differences in shadow angle within a short distance in the meadow.

Other indications of hoax involve the actions or inactions of persons shown. One person walking by the scene of the apparent attack pays no attention except to look in the direction of the videographer. The mother does not even notice the large bird as it shoots towards her and her baby. Only after the bird has lifted the toddler off the ground and has begun to fly away does the mother even turn her head.

Baby is being carried away to the eagle's nest. Why is Mommy so slow?

Mommy is far away; so why does the eagle drop the baby?

 

As the woman calmly jogs in the direction of the apparent bird and apparent baby, she does not scream. No sound comes out of her mouth, at least not loud enough to be picked up on the video. Why then does the bird drop the child?

When the bird seems to have lost its grip on the baby, they are at least six feet off the ground, possibly eight feet. If this were an actual event, the bird would have had a firm grip on that child by the time it was over four feet above the ground. Look at some eagle talons.

Eagle talons pierce the bodies of prey

The talons of eagles are built to grab into the flesh of its victims. Any bird large enough to have carried away a toddler as large as the one shown at the end of this video---that would have been a bird larger than the one depicted, especially considering how quickly the baby seems to have been lifted well up into the air. But even if that were not the case, the talons would have been large enough to have pierced the body of the child.

How is it that the apparent eagle lost its grip? The mother was nowhere near the bird and was jogging rather slowly and did not scream. If the grip of the talons were only in the clothing, then the child might have fallen out of his clothes; but that was not depicted: Both toddler and clothing fell out of the talons of the apparent bird. There is no explanation for that except that strange things do happen on rare occasions. The problem with that apparent reasoning is this: Too many strange things happen within a few second in this video.

Why Look so Deeply When the Hoax was Admitted?

One day after the Youtube video was uploaded, animation students admitted they had created the whole thing, using 3D computer models. So why look so deeply into the video, finding signs that show that it was a hoax? We have reasons.

Within a few days, "Golden Eagle Snatches Kid" had been seen by forty million youtube viewers. I had put up a number of comments, my observations about inconsistancies in shadow directions. One Youtube fan sent me the message, "Who cares it's common knowledge that it's a hoax, move on with your life! Admitted CGI!" But that is part of the problem. We need to do more thinking; we need to look more carefully; we need to listen to other opinions.

There may still be a million persons who saw the video and believed it, yet have not yet been informed that it is a hoax. Perhaps more than a few preschoolers and babies will miss outings to city parks this holiday season. Perhaps some people will needlessly worry about birds. Perhaps somebody will shoot a Golden Eagle. I will "move on" but it will be to continue to promote the truth.

The problems are far more than just missing outings to parks, or becoming mildly paranoid about large birds, or shooting an eagle. We need to think more carefully.

We need to better understand human reasoning. Why do some persons make rash judgements and then do more than just dismiss a different opinion: They dismiss another person as an "idiot."

On Youtube, I wrote the following rather vague comment about shadows of trees:

Shadows of trees show this is a video tampered with.

On December 19th I received the following comment on Youtube:

"You're an idiot, 0:11 shadow is apparent from the tree in front. Also the ground is very uneven, shadows will be distorted."

"0:11" is less vague, but I don't know what he means, for many still images exist for this one second of video. Within that one second I see many shadows of trees, some of them proving the video was indeed tampered with. I will not respond to that person by parroting the word "idiot," to judge him, regardless of what he was looking at in that one second of video, but I made my own video to be more specific:

"Eagle Snatch or Not"

(Jonathan Whitcomb's humorous look at the Youtube video)

We need to think more clearly and judge others' more carefully than we have done. I will try to be more specific in the future, rather than use just one short sentence. But I'm not alone in being in need of improvement.


Fake Bird Attacks Fake Baby

More telling is the behavior of what seems to be the mother. She seems to see nothing as the bird flies to her baby, picking it up off the ground.

She saw, in Arkansas, a Pterosaur Soar

In the summer of 1977, at about one or two in the afternoon, the sighting involved a close encounter with an apparent pterosaur (albeit labeled "teradactyl") that had a large head and a wingspan of about eight feet.

 

Manta Ray Misidentification?

A skeptic recently suggested sightings of pterosaurs come from startling or even shocking encounters people have with Manta rays that jump out of the sea. He implies those persons would report that they had encountered pterosaurs. But many problems jump out at the conscientious objective investigator, the person who examines the cryptozoological evidence carefully.

Some ray fish do jump out of the water. A Manta ray fish, of an ocean or sea, may jump as high as ten feet above the surface, perhaps. But all those jumping fish fall back into the sea, demonstrating that they are not strange featherless flying creatures.

A major problem with a jumping-fish explanation for modern pterosaurs is this: Most sightings are not over any large body of water, especially not over a sea or ocean where the Manta rays live. The great majority of sightings are over land. In fact, not all sighting are only of flying: Some involve a featherless flying creature perched in a tree or something else.

And many modern pterosaur sightings involve a flying creature that is flying far higher than ten feet and far longer three seconds. The Manta ray fish cannot hold itself up in the air for more much more than three or four seconds or so, before it falls back into the water.

Jumping Manta rays may surprise a few persons, on occasion, but such encounters cannot even come close to explaining the many worldwide sightings of modern pterosaurs.

Perhaps not even one sighting can be explained as a misidentified jumping fish, regarding the many sightings that have been reported to cryptozoologists who specialize in modern pterosaurs. (Those specialists include Paul Nation, Jonathan Whitcomb, Garth Guessman, and David Woetzel.)

Manta Ray Problems

But for years my writings have made it clear that the great majority of sightings of apparent pterosaurs suggest the Rhamphorhynchoid type, NOT the Pterodactyloid type.

Pterosaurs are not Manta rays

Jacob Kepas, and a local guide hiked up a mountain and got a distant view, in daylight, of an indava that was apparently sleeping on a cliff. It was similar in size to a small airplane. It was obviously no oceanic fish up there on that mountain. 

New Nonfiction Book on Modern Pterosaurs

I finished my newest book, Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, and its available on the Amazon Kindle store.

This is my first ebook. The Amazon-Kindle version has a linked index and linked table of contents. I hope to make this nonfiction cryptozoology ebook availabe in other formats soon.

From the Preface:

You will here find reports of encounters with apparent living pterosaurs, including many accounts never before published in any book. Other sighting reports are condensed from the print book Searching for Ropens. The ebook you are now examining is neither exhaustive nor rudimentary, but it explains most of what most Australians, and others, need to know about what might, on rare occasions, fly over their heads at night.

From the first chapter:

Who could organize any expedition to search for living pterosaurs? Only an official discovery could awaken Western scientists so they could search for extant pterosaurs, but discovery normally comes after searching, not before. Looking back at this problem, from the time of Darwin until 1990 it appears to have been an almost hopeless atmosphere for a discovery. But a solution eventually appeared . . . from an unexpected source.

Modern Pterosaur in Australia

Sighting reports of modern pterosaurs in Australia often come from the coast: eastern coast (just north of Brisbane), south coast, and west coast.

Giant Pterodactyls in Australia

Many cryptozoologists may have read about the Perth pterosaur, for much has been written about that sighting in Western Australia; but other Australians, and some non-Australians, have seen obvious living pterosaurs on this continent and over the surrounding seas and islands.

Modern Pterosaur in California

Where can you go to see a living pterosaur, if you'd rather not trudge through the humid jungles of Papua New Guinea? Try looking into a storm drainage canal in Los Angeles County. That's what I'm doing now.

A lady in her backyard in Lakewood, California, had no desire to see a "dragon pterodactyl" when she walked out from under her gazebo, at 11:45 a.m., on June 19, 2012, but that's what she saw. Yell at your dog for barking too much, but beware of the ropen that may be perched on the telephone cable, eighteen feet from your forehead. Sometimes dogs bark for a reason.

The lady estimated the wingspan at six feet or more and the tail at four feet or more. The flying creature had no feathers, and the tail had a "triangle" at the end.

After talking with me about her sighting, she remembered something that happened at night, about a year earlier. She saw something fly through the storm canal, and she heard the dogs barking, one after another, as the creature must have been flying past the backyards where her neighbors have dogs.

One of the storm channels in Lakewood, California

Flying Creature in Southern California

On July 23, I set up my game camera, with the help of the eyewitness’s husband. Some people call this automatic camera a “deer cam,” triggered by movement. This one records both night and day. As of early August 1, 2012, I have not yet seen anything, in the hundreds of photos, that appears to be a pterosaur, but not all images have been examined in detail, and this investigation may continue for many weeks, perhaps months.