Thunderbirds: America's Living Legends of Giant Birds Paperback – November 4, 2004

Good book and it arrived ahead of schedule.

I bought this book because I was interested in Thunder Birds, I saw one over 50 years ago. Had I not been standing beside a broken tree I may well have been his lunch. As it glided down the creek I noticed the wing span was creek bank to creek bank more or less. I went to the assessor's office a few months ago and measured the creek banks, the narrowest spot was 36 feet, the widest was 50 feet, they can measure to an accuracy of 0.0001. I am telling you the bird I saw was 36-40 feet wing span about 8 - 10 feet off the ground. He / she flapped his wings 3 times till he went out of sight maybe a mile away. I thought it was an airplane when I saw the shadow about age 14, there were not many planes around then. I heard no sound, but watched the shadow coming toward me, I thought it was an airplane, dark brown in color but not quite black. I was mind boggled at the size and thinking of nothing else - good thing I was standing by a tree, I may have been a Thunder Bird burger.

A clear and well laid out report on the mysterious birds sighted every now and again in the American skies. Mr. Hall lays out the case for large unidentified birds as seen by good, honest folks since the late 70's. Where as Science has not seen fit to investigate, Mr. Hall has spent many years collecting these sightings and made the effort to try and identify these mysterious creatures. I personally believe that there are more things on this world than we know and encourage everyone to keep looking for these hidden wonders yet to be discovered

Very good book. Intriguing. I have read many books on the subject of Cryptozoology, this book was refreshing in that it had a great deal of new and insightful information.I have looked very hard for some of Mark Hall's previous books but cannot locate any.It would be nice if Mr. Hall would write another book soon.

Mark Hall has been a mainstay of Cryptozoology for a very long time. How I missed this book the first time it went around I don't know. But it's back and it's great. This book and Nova's show on the Thunderbirds should be all you need to start looking for some huge birds in your neighborhood. A "Must " for any Fortean or Crypto fan's bookshelf.

Recently purchased this book through Amazon, and am about halfway through. Was delighted to find a crypto book focused entirely on possibly surviving giant/prehistoric birds, and this one contains a wealth of information about the various incarnations of the 'Thunderbird', from distant times to the present. Hall's writing style is fine, and but for one thing I'd be thoroughly satisfied with the book. That's the insistance on following nearly every single reference to size or distance (height, weight, width, miles, etc.) with the metric equivalent. The first few times you see this it's not a problem, but when it repeats, and repeats, and repeats and repeats, page after page, chapter after chapter, it goes from being annoying and distracting to where you have to force yourself to continue reading. Since dimensions and distances are such an important element of the sightings, there aren't usually just one or two but a half dozen or more metric references on each page. Don't know if this would bother anyone else, but it certainly has decreased my enjoyment of the book. As far as I can determine, the author is American, living in the US, so all the metric references just seem unnecessary and pretentious. Include them in editions for the overseas market, but most of us here don't 'do metric', or care to have a good book ruined by their constant inclusion.

Mark A. Hall's 'Thunderbirds: America's Living Legends of Giant Birds' (2004) is a well intentioned but tepid popular study of the history and folklore of the subject. At 177 light and breezy pages, this material, little of which is new, would have been better suited to a two-part article in Fortean Times. Hall has written about unexplained natural phenomena "for more than thirty years," yet the volume isn't a convincing testament of Hall's dedication to his subject; airy and topical, the book, which begs questions at every turn, cries out for a more thorough critical analysis of its subject.More difficult to accept are Hall's careless errors. While John Keel did believe there was a relationship between 'Mothman' and the UFOs reported simultaneously in West Virginia in the 1960s, Keel never claimed that 'Mothman' was "something from outer space," a fact that even a cursory reading of 'The Mothman Prophecies' (1975) reveals. In Keel's estimation, not even UFOs originated on another planet.Hall believes that the creature that came to be known as 'Mothman' was a large cryptid owl. But several witnesses reported that the creature, without flapping its wings, rose straight up into the air like a helicopter; how could a large owl, or any other avian creature, take flight in such a manner? Many witnesses also reported that the creature had clearly defined human-like legs; is Hall's 'giant owl' so anatomically different from typical owls that it fits this description? If so, he doesn't state this clearly.In 'Mothman: The Facts Behind The Legend' (2002), key witness Linda Scarberry said of her first encounter, "the body of it ['Mothman'] was like a slender, muscular man, and was flesh-colored. Its wings looked like angel wings...it had arms and legs, like a muscular man...it had one of its wings caught in a guide wire near a section of road close to the power plant, and was pulling on its wings with its hands, trying to free itself. Its hands were really big."The second time that Scarberry saw the creature, it was sitting on the roof of her home "with its arms around its legs and wings folded around itself." Later, upon viewing a "huge, white owl" that someone had killed in the region, Scarberry stated, "I felt like sitting down and crying. You could tell by looking at the owl that it wasn't what was being reported. It wasn't nearly as big, and it was a bird. What we saw was no bird, much less an owl or a crane. Its body wasn't even close to either of those. I could see muscles in the muscles in the arms and legs of the Mothman. They were human-like. Not even close to a bird of any kind." How does Hall reconcile his cryptid owl theory with these and other similar reports? Why doesn't he attempt to?Hall's entire chapter on the giant owl, which he refers to collectively as "Bighoot," will be problematic for critical readers. Hall reports that several Indian tribes have legends of their tribes being harassed by a creature they referred to as "Flying Head" or "Big Head"; these were literally huge heads without torsos that were covered with long hair. In what sense could these mythological, perhaps metaphorical, creatures have been giant owls? Hall believes that the Indians most likely made the simple error of mistaking the giant owl's feathers for hair, but according to the mythology, this hair was so long that it allowed the creatures to fly in storm winds. Native Americans were generally keen observers of nature, and probably knew an owl, however large, when they saw one.Hall also quotes West Virginian history professor James Gay Jones' account of "a large bird with the head of a man" as further possible evidence for Bighoot, but completely neglects to address the matter of the reported human head. Though Hall states that the giant owl "would stand several feet tall," he quotes a woman who reported two sightings of "9-10 feet high" owl without even attempting to explain this radical variation in size. If some giant owls are "several feet tall" while others are "9-10 feet," so large that they can easily be mistaken for leafless trees in winter, then 'Thunderbirds' is certainly the place in which Hall should have addressed this important discrepancy.Hall also quotes Betty Sturgeon, whom Hall says "came forth with a story to tell about killing a giant owl at the time of the Mothman excitement decades ago," but nowhere in the quoted Herald-Dispatch article does Sturgeon herself say that the creature her husband shot and killed was an owl of any kind. The reporter, Bob Withers, only states that Sturgeon "recalls glancing at some kind of big bird." Elsewhere, Withers refers to the animal as "it" and as "the creature." Clearly, if the article specifically referred to an owl, regardless of size, that portion of the story should have been quoted in full.The "Flatwoods Monster" witnessed in Braxton County, West Virginia in 1952 has famously been explained away by CSICOP's Joe Nickel as being a large owl, a theory that dovetails nicely with the more conservative aspects of Hall's Bighoot theory, so why does this fascinating case go completely unaddressed, when a cautious reading of it would only bolster Hall's giant owl argument?Elsewhere, Hall reports that "the Quinault Indians found a live whale still thrashing in the mountains and observed the gradual deterioration of its corpse" and that "whales marked by talons have also been reported found in trees." Are readers to believe that thunderbirds can grow large enough to pluck whales out of the ocean? Discussing a 1977 amateur film of possible thunderbirds in flight, Hall states, "perhaps one day a more broad-minded consideration and careful scrutiny of this film will be productive." Why hasn't Hall assumed this responsibility?Since the disappointing 'Thunderbirds' reads like a cryptozoological primer, the book is best suited to those new to the field.

Mark Hall is "the" person that has dug up all this important info. I have no idea how the other reviewer on here could say that this is old stuff. This is the only book-length book about Thunderbirds. This person is flying around the wrong trees, methinks.This is a great book.