{{Title link: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-mythic-child-stealing-thunderbirds-of-illinois}}

ursulavernon:

Let me tell you, O Tumblr of my confessions, why I do not believe in Thunderbirds.

It is because I am a birder.

If a goddamn Citrine Wagtail appears in North America–a Eurasian songbird which, in winter plumage, resembles a rather drab mockingbird, only smaller and with less personality–if one shows up anywhere, suddenly birders appear around it. It is like a magic trick. It is nearly proof of spontaneous generation, except that it causes birders to appear who are in their sixties and have had careers and whom other birders will vouch for (and I am still not entirely convinced this is not the universe joggling our memories to make them fit.) Provide the rare bird and birders erupt out of the ground, and then they tell other birders. There used to be a hotline, but now there are Rare Bird Alerts sent out in near daily digest form from eBird.

If a Kirtland’s warbler should appear on the East Coast, not only is it spotted nearly instantaneously as it alights on a branch, but it is immediately assigned a park ranger to protect it from the paparazzi, as if the bird is a celebrity, which it is. (The Kirtland’s warbler, incidentally, is small, brownish-bluish-grayish, with a yellow belly. It’s big for a warbler, though.) And this is a bird that occurs in a known range in Michigan already.

If there were Thunderbirds lurking anywhere in Illinois, you would be able to find them by going to the place where there were a number of people with binoculars pointing up. You would greet them with “Got anything?” and they would reply with “Yep. Thunderbird.” And then someone with a scope would say “Want a look?” and you would get your lifer look at a mythical bird and thank the nice person for the look, and they would nod and silently judge your worth based on the quality of your optics and you would accept this as part and parcel of the birding experience.

So, no. I am skeptical. I would accept yeti and skunk ape and Chessie long before I will accept anything that could conceivably be put on a birder’s life list. Because a birder could trip over a yeti and it would come out as a footnote in a lengthy discussion three weeks later about their search for the Lewis’s woodpecker, but a Thunderbird? Naaaaah.

…that is all.