The Claim
Reports of enormous, condor-like birds with wingspans reportedly reaching 15 to 20 feet have surfaced across North America for well over a century, including a widely covered 1977 incident in Lawndale, Illinois, where a ten-year-old boy said he was briefly lifted off the ground by two huge birds before his mother scared them off.
The Evidence
- Multiple newspaper-documented sightings of unusually large birds across several decades.
- The 1977 Lawndale case, investigated by ornithologists at the time and covered nationally.
- A persistent legend of a “lost” 1890s photograph allegedly showing cowboys posing with a shot thunderbird, which no one has ever produced.
The Official Story
Ornithologists who reviewed the Lawndale case concluded the birds were almost certainly turkey vultures or, at most, an escaped or migrating condor — both large enough to startle a child but far too light to lift one. The legendary “lost photograph” has never surfaced despite over a century of searching, which strongly suggests it never existed as described.
File Notes
The thunderbird as a spiritual figure appears across many distinct Indigenous nations' traditions, predating and existing separately from the more recent, secular “giant bird sighting” reports that make up most of this case file.