Big Birds Or Not?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 6th, 2007
Let me try this again.
Yesterday, I too hastily said some things about Ken Gerhard’s new book without having the time to fully develop what I meant. I removed that blog, and then later saw that cryptozoologist Chad Arment disagreed with me, a bit, that’s fine, about our different world views of cryptozoology. Chad also took the opportunity to use my vanished blog to have at me. I actually think that is great, as I need to be pulled in sometimes, especially when a book puts me in a bad mood and I go too global. I did not mean to throw Ken’s book into the trashbin of pseudo-cryptozoology books written by certain authors who shall remain nameless. So anyway, I caught myself, and see it got a good blog out of Chad about Ken’s book.
Hey, I was wrong to post what I did without fully stating my thinking at 5 am in the morning. So Chad rightfully has posted a more favorable review of Ken’s book, along with comments addressed to some thoughts I too quickly expressed about “standards.” The Crookston Bigfoot delivery is happening today, so I don’t have time to yet clearly unfold what I wish to expand on regarding the kind of cryptozoology books being published out there. But let me reframe, at least, a longer look at Big Bird! Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters, and do a more considered review of a few things that trouble me about this book. But first, specifically via extracts from Chad’s blog, I want to let Chad Arment have time and space here to say some positive things about Ken’s book:
Regarding the text, it starts off with three chapters of investigating Texas “flying creature” reports, including some historical recaps. Gerhard interviews witnesses, visits locations of interest, and gives us a look into his thought process as he investigates the “Big Bird.” He follows this up with a chapter briefly noting flying cryptids from around the world, a chapter focusing on other flying cryptids from North America, and a final chapter noting the various theories that have been considered to explain the primary sightings. Gerhard also includes within the appendices a descriptive paleontological scenario on pterosaurs (by Leland Hale, not sure who that is) and a chronology of the Texas Big Bird sightings. Yes, it appears that Gerhard included Wikipedia in his sourcenotes (bad author! baaaad author!), but he also cites other investigators and sources. None of the chapters are long, but then they aren’t fluffed up with pretentious over-speculation, either. Guess which one I think is worse?
So, is Big Bird! a cryptozoological classic? No….But is it interesting? Yes….Is there new information in it? Yeah…One problem with the non-Texas chapters does arise—they aren’t always properly sourced; I don’t know where Gerhard got several of the reports from (personal interview, website, or another investigator). Chad Arment
See all of Chad’s comments, which I recommend you read, here.
Ken Gerhard, whom I have met and know as a fine person, has written this new book of his with title “Big Birds!” The name of the title is not about anything originally under Ken’s control, as early media reports from Texas, which Ken studied intensively since 2003, labeled the sighted cryptid with large leathery wings, as a “Big Bird.”
It is well-known my interpretations of these specific reports are that they are bats, not pterosaurs and pterodactyls. But I think Ken and I might agree that what was seen along the Mexico-Texas Rio Grande border in the 1970s were not birds.
In the introduction by Jon Downes (who also was the publisher via The Centre for Fortean Zoology Press) starts by mentioning the Owlman reports from the United Kingdom, and then he immediately tells us the creature is “too fantastic to be a bona fide flesh and blood animal.”
These Owlmen are members of the netherworld “zooforms” of the CFZ, Downes has written often, cryptids that are inhabitants of another dimension that come visit us here on our plane. Of course, I have to point out that Owlmen may be “too fantastic” because they are simply Doc Tony Shiels’ merry hoaxes, which is even what the prankster Doc has alluded to.
Next Downes, going down the same path Bernard Heuvelmans did, restates Ivan T. Sanderson’s sighting of something large flying at Sanderson as he finds himself floundering in the middle of a river, during the 1932-1933 Percy Sladen Expedition to the Cameroons. Was this a giant bird? Definitely not, thought Sanderson, but we don’t learn this detail from Downes, who misses the chance to help the reader along with a reframing and defining of where this book is going. Downes is more interested in telling us about how Gerald Durrell was inspired by this passage, and how Downes’s trip to the USA resulted in his meeting Gerhard, and his agreeing to publish this book.
Ken Gerhard opens up his section with a brief comment that
…there are no recognised birds…that can claim a twenty-foot wingspan. There were, however, such creatures in the distant past. Animals that resembled flying dragons ruled the skies for nearly two million years, before supposedly disappearing into extinction.Ken Gerhard
After the book revisits and explores the Texas cases, Gerhard takes on the worldwide menagerie of the kongamato, ropen, chupacabras, Thunderbirds (leather-winged and feathery ones), teratorns, giant bats, Houston Batman, Owlman, Mothman, and more pterosaurs.
After the global review, Gerhard summarizes what he thinks of the “Big Bird” of 1976 Texas.
Having touched on all the various possibilities, I return again to the pterosaurs, which tend to be my favourite ‘Big Bird’ candidates as this body of work clearly makes evident. True, they were not birds. But, as the product of convergent evolution, they may have bore a striking resemblance to their modern day counterparts….In light of recent discoveries of so-called proto feathers on some pterosaur fossils, the true relationship between the flying reptiles and modern birds is intriguing.Ken Gerhard
Reports of what was seen in Texas, except in some few cases which might have been merely misidentifications of known birds, more often talk of “bat-like” or “human-like” faces and leathery wings. Large bats, not pterosaurs, might be responsible, but to try to squeeze some kind of prehistoric reptilian bird out of these stories incorrectly labeled “Big Birds” seems a stretch.
Gerhard is to be congratulated for retracing the footsteps of previous investigators and breaking new ground. Jerry Clark was one of these people, as Clark did a major article for Oui after his March 1976 on-site fieldwork and interviews.
As Gerhard acknowledges, this material showed up in Creatures of the Other Edge, and begins Gerhard’s “Journey to the Outer Edge” section. (Sadly, while the case material in our 1978 book was new then, the Jungian premise of Creatures of the Other Edge, despite an almost immediate rejection 30 years ago by Clark and myself, lives on in the psychosocial “zooforms” of the CFZ. It only took years of cringing for Clark and me to mature enough to know that our data should outlive the theories, and thus we finally agreed to see the book republished in 2006.)
I am sure Gerhard’s book will and should join the ranks of new books on regionally investigated cases beginning to populate most cryptozoological book libraries, as well as some school book collections in the American Southwest.
It should, don’t get me wrong, and Ken did a good job recording and sharing his material. But the speculations that Arment does not like are what reframes and will define this book as one about pterosaurs – especially from that image that outweighs the title – on the cover. Perhaps Arment and I might run the white flag up and agree that if Ken stuck more to his case material and did better sourcing, instead of so strongly trying to make a case that flying reptiles from millions of years ago still lived in Texas, Ken would have written an excellent, instead of just a very good book?
Considering that Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson have written about some of these same subjects before, and how Jerry Clark’s firsthand investigations of the 1976 Texas events were published and republished in 1977, 1978, 1984, and 2006, I find the CFZ marketing of this book as “Ken’s scholarly work is the first of its kind” giving “evidence of a stunning zoological discovery ignored by mainstream science” is an unfortunate characterization. I don’t even think Ken would have come up with that promotional line.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I think that there are probably several species of very large bats that have yet to be “discovered”. I seriously doubt that there are any surviving pterosaurs, but I suppose it’s possible. Bats are much more likely though.
I’ve not read the book yet, but there’s no excuse for not sorting out birds, bats, and flying reptiles up front for the young reader.
With MattBille’s comment taken into account (correctomundo):
1. I don’t think I’ll read this, which is not a judgment of anything but my personal belief in the likelihood of extant critters like this. Which is just a belief, not backed by any evidence. (Although I’d sure wonder what extant critter you could be seeing that would make you think “pterosaur.” My personal candidate for most likely: great blue heron.)
2. It doesn’t have to be long to be a good crypto book. “Field Guide to the Sasquatch” by David G. Gordon is only 48 pages, and everyone interested in learning about the sasquatch should start with that book.
3. Maybe “big bird!” is a frequent layman description, which goes away when the “bird” is described? If the title is a theme of reports, then it’s excusable. This sort of reminds me of the Gary Larson cartoons that show penguins and polar bears talking to each other. Larson talked about all the mail he got saying, they live on opposite sides of the world! and how he never got one saying: THEY DON’T TALK!
With the fur on pterosaurs, I wonder if they should be classified with the monotremes, rather than the reptiles, let alone the avian dinosaurs. The basic classification is 19th century, and we’ve learned so much since then, that I think it needs to be rethought, possibly putting the raptors in Aves rather than in Reptilia, for instance.
Matt: Just to clarify, Gerhard does discuss various birds, bats, and pterosaurs in one chapter. His conclusions may be debatable, but he doesn’t skip the subject.
Not to sound like Gerhard’s editor (harrumph!) or anything. But here:
“But, as the product of convergent evolution, they may have BORE a striking resemblance to their modern day counterparts….” [caps mine]
That should be BORNE, Ken.
Giant birds are a concept that is just too hard to accept. With the exception of modern day birds dinosaurs are gone and they aren’t coming back. For any species to survive you need a suitable environment. Flying creatures with a twenty foot wingspan would need to spend most of their time in the air above the trees. As soon as you get to this elevation the likelihood of being sighted increases enormously. If you were to factor in the need for a breeding population of suitable size it would make the existence of creatures like this impossible not to detect.
These reports have to be misidentifications of known animals that were much closer then was believed by the observers.
Regards
Haven’t read the book yet, but I do think that regional crypto studies should be encouraged. If there is even one fact, perspective or observation in the book that has so far escaped general notice, then it is a worthwhile book. Not every work has to be a masterpiece to earn a place on the shelf. Perhaps it’s not a great book — I may well pay $13 online to find out — but perhaps Mr. Gerhard can give us a better one next time.
I think zooforms are becoming an endangered species at the CFZ as well. Good riddance in my view; but I suppose we all enter cryptozoology from different directions.
The eyewitness reports of Big Bird are interesting, but I have a hard time believing that there are large flying animals in the continental US that haven’t been discovered by now.
Kongamato and ropen? I’m open to those possibilities. Sanderson’s giant bat? Sure, I’ll buy into that as well. Pterosaurs over Texas? I’m not buying into that.
Although I suppose it’s possible that certain specimens of certain species might occasionally grow much larger than expected; Marlon Lowe (sp?) is proof of that.
sschaper, there’s a really good argument for doing away with class Reptilia altogether. It’s more of a hodgepodge grouping of more or less similar animals than anything else. I also believe that pterosaurs should not be classified as reptiles. I believe they should be placed in a separate class of their own. I’m not at all sure that the monotremes should be classed as mammals for that matter. Turtles are dissimilar enough from snakes and lizards to warrant separation at the class level too. I would class birds, dinosaurs, and crocodilians together in the same class, snakes and lizards in another class, turtles in another, and tuataras by themselves. Furthermore I would separate monotremes from mammals at the class level or at least put them in a subclass (as many taxonomists already do).
The more we learn about reptiles, the more differences turn up. About the only things that the various groups called “reptiles” have in common are ectothermia and scaly skin.
Unknown flying fauna of almost any description seems hard to believe, let alone the kind that would be as charismatic as a gigantic bird or a flying dinosaur. I’ve been very interested in the scientific understanding of human perception for a while, and have come to accept that our perception, especially peerceptions from our vision which we hold in such high regard, is tightly impinged on a structure of how we think objective reality works both instictively(intuitively) and empirically. Most anyone will believe that theirown vision is very accurate and dependably captures reality. It turns out when we record what happens for the instant replay we see we’re actually pretty poor at taking it all in and recalling it accurately. We by and large think that we have superb color memory and we think we’re great at judging distance and size…all excellent reasons why a healthy dose of skepticism is not something you want to leave home without. Some of the recent examples (the gorilla and the basketball players) that I’ve seen on tv programming which explored the human mind show how in-accurate and undependable our sense of vision and recollection can be, especially in settings where other interesting things are happening. The examples are eye opening and the implications regarding the validity of eye-witness reports, whether at a traffic accident or a sea serpent, I think are interesting as far as cryptozoology in general and BF in particular. So much so that in my mind I’ve reconsidered the idea of large birds, despite their not being whence we think they ought to be. The sightings of a very large broadwinged bird by some very experienced bush fliers a couple of years ago from Southwest Alaska stick in my mind.
So on one hand I think that human perceptions are not as dependable as we think they are so we shouldnt take outlandish sightings for their face value, but on the other it means that creatures which at a distance fit our general idea of what’s out there lead us to see turkey vultures instead of teratorns, bats instead of pteradactyls. Our ancestral hunting instincts, one would think might very well come into play in unexpected ways as we interpret the environment, and it’s a sure thing that what we see as objective reality has more to do with what we want to see than we might have thought prior to “this fascinating modern age we live in”.
Well, Dogu4, I can’t really add much to your well put post. Humans tend to have pretty decent ability to judge size and distance, as do all predators with stereoscopic vision. It’s the recollection of events sifted through our concious mind where I think the problems occur. The tendency for the human mind to inaccurately recall events is one reason why in most saces, a criminal cannot be locked up from witness testimony in and of itself. There has to be some sort of hard data to back it up. This is one of the sticking points in cryptozoology, I feel. Lots of compelling sightings, too little to substantiate it. I beleive there is something going on and that accurate sightings are made, but the simple fact of the matter is there has to be something more because, especially in stressful situations, the mind can twist things around. This will make it hard for anyone to accept or base too much on sightings alone.
Right…our vision is OK for what it was adapted to do…so for the distance to a sheltering tree, hanging fruit or the distance and size of a likely bit of prey, it’s great..but cryptids under the influences of natural selection are able to disrupt our abilities and in the results oriented world of nature’s diversity there are several options which could work and we see examples of those (pattern disruption, coloration, paralysis…). Big birds and flying devils…I can believe we have an instinctual response to the dark shape of predatory birds wings hardwired, just like our nearly universal startle-response to snakelike shapes at our feet…even if they’re garden hoses. Since we can’t bend down at our feet to see if killer birds are actually big enough to be a danger, we flinch a bit and when it passes away we see it getting smaller and that it was just another one of the regular big birds, vultures, herons, owls…condors. We’re not good at much more than that for bird ID, even though soaring birds are great at focusing on, magnifiying and ID’ing us on the ground at great distances.
Anyhow, since we can never really be sure of what we’re seeing (specifically referring to cryptids) it makes all the more sense to record all the sightings until the unmistakable imprint of reality becomes evident, which would help us to understand what it is we’re dealing with and how to further verify scientifically their existence….separating the signal from the noise, so to speak. Turkey vultures from teratorns. Creating an environment where people will come forward with their info and having it discussed intelligently is a good step and places like this are a fine example.
My thoughts are thus: I have been skeptical about the idea of pterosaurs flying the skies and even thunderbirds…it seems pretty out there that such big flying critters could go unnoticed if they are out there.
Then while driving to and from work one day I began looking at the sky (while driving…okay not real smart, but hey I survived) and I got to thinking about how little time the average person probably really does spend looking at the sky. I would like to think some big flying critter would catch my eye, and others, but realistically, might I be able to see something (and if it was really high up) might I not just assume it was a plane and not waste any attention on it?
Think about how much time you actually pay attention to what is above us?
I guess my mind is open on the subject, though I haven’t seen any pterodactyls flying about (well except on re-runs of Johnny Quest).
Last, I would appreciate a link or info on where to go for the book–if nothing else, it will be valuable for the cataloguing of sightings.
Thanks