After reports of a giant bird having been seen by villagers in Southwest Alaska in recent weeks was published in the Anchorage Daily News, Oct 15, the story took off and swiftly flew along global news wires. It even prompted late night talk show host David Letterman to joke about the incidents during his monologue last Wednesday.

Eyewitnesses said the huge raptor-like creature had a wingspan of around 14 feet and was about as long as a Dodge van but biologist and raptor specialist Phil Schemf is skeptical. He believes the sightings could be of a Steller's sea eagle, a species native to northeast Asia.

According to Birdingonthe.Net records the most recent sighting of a Steller's took place on Sept. 18 in Dillingham, Alaska.

Longtime friend of FarShores, Nina Fulton, says she almost jumped out of her skin after reading about the giant winged creature in the ADN news story, carried by FarShores.

"I saw the darn thing from my balcony two years ago," wrote Nina, from B.C. "I told my kids what I saw and they think I'm nuts or halucinating".

She continued: "...this one night at about 2am I was looking east between two highrises and saw this huge thing flapping along between the buildings. Both buildings are around 10 stories high and about one city block apart. So I had a good look at it and managed to estimate it's length based on the length of the balconies of one of the buildings (a good 25 feet). It was not a fast moving object and you could see the wings flapping. What got me was that the thing was not more than half a block beyond those buildings and below the smaller one.

"I have seen cranes fly by heading to the Fraser river flats but this was no crane. I waited for someone to mention it in the news but no-one did. I had the impression that what I was looking at was a Pteradactyl-like creature."

Nina, who has her own web site, was concerned enough about the incident to report it at the time to the New Westminster police, adding: "I did read somewhere an account of some mystery down around the US/Mexican border area that children were disappearing and the village was saying that it was a huge bird and they drew pictures that resembled the pteradactyl image."

The Anchorage Daily News of Oct. 18 carried a short follow-up to its original story and quoted a man who remembers an astonishing sight as he crossed the equator on a troop transport in 1944.

"It was not a sea bird in any form," he writes. "I did some research just a few years ago to try to determine what I had seen. I came onto some information on a flying animal called a Pteradon, which is of the Pteradactyl family. These animals are thought to be extict over 150,000 years ago."

Several people contacted the newspaper suggesting the flying creature could be a famed Thunderbird of Native American legend; meanwhile others in newsgroups have already noted the similarity between this giant bird and the legendary Mothman.

In July, researcher Stan Gordon, of Pennsylvania, provided us with two eyewitness sightings of giant winged creatures, or Thunderbirds, that had taken place in the Northeast of his state during June. According to one witness, "Their wings looked batlike," and had a span of around 12 feet or more.

"American Indian lore is filled with stories of strange, monster birds with enormous wingspans and the propensity to carry away human victims," states the History and Hauntings of Illinois web site.

It tells of rock paintings depicting this creature, first documented in the journals of Marquette in 1673.

There was a rash of giant bird sightings throughout the state during 1977 that officials from the Department of Conservation sought to explain away as having been Condors. It has a wingspan of 9 feet but many witnesses say the bird they saw was much larger, and possessed a wingspan between 10-15 feet.

If the creature encountered in Alaska recently really is a Steller's sea eagle, as one of the world's largest eagles and with a wingspan normally of up to 8 feet, undoubtedly this particular bird dwarfs all others of its species.