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Pterosaur? (1 Viewer)

A

Ar-Pharazon

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I'm in the U.S. of A., northeast Illinois, Lake county.

The other day while driving, I saw a medium to largish bird flying, with a very long tail with a spade shape at the end.

I've googled various terms with no luck.

The only thing I can say, it looked like some sort of Pterosaur from the tail shape and long wings. Unfortunately this can't be the case. Any ideas?
 
Yes it is a Pterosaur! How lucky are you! They are extremely rare and visible to those that are psychologically challenged. Good luck in your future endeavours.
 
Maybe a large bird with something tangled on its legs - I've seen, a couple of times, wierd looking creatures that on closer views showed that the poor bird had plastic bag/sheeting stuck to them. I can't think of any large N.American landbird with a tail like you describe - plenty of largish birds though!

By the way, welcome to Birdforum!
 
We get questions like this from time to time. Usually the mystery bird is not seen again, so there's no firm conclusion, but the plausible explanations include:

-large bird with long legs trailing behind (e.g. crane or heron) - sometimes the feet can form a diamond shape

-large bird with something tangled on its feet

-"drone" or radio-controlled aircraft
 
Depending on what is meant by 'medium to largish', and accepting that birds can sometimes appear much larger or smaller than they are depending on the circumstances in which they are viewed, how about Great-tailed Grackle?
 
Foxy said:
Depending on what is meant by 'medium to largish', and accepting that birds can sometimes appear much larger or smaller than they are depending on the circumstances in which they are viewed, how about Great-tailed Grackle?
Click to expand...

Great-tailed Grackle would be remarkable in northeast Illinois.
 
andyadcock said:
Non birders have no idea that an ID on such a decription, is impossible.



A
Click to expand...

Add to that the pure excitement that you may have seen something special or rare and you'll convince yourself that you did.

I think the original poster is a genuine guy who thinks he has seen something amazing and I hope from this he gets an urge to always look upward to the skies - not in a 1950s UFO movie type of way ;) - and gets the 'birding' bug. I mean, the more bird lovers we have then the better for all birds - right?

Now, not to pour scorn on the original poster, of course not, I wouldn't do that, but there is a website for people who think they may have seen a pterosaur here

https://www.modernpterosaur.com/

And we do have the famous, but totally fake, photo that has done the rounds for years on the internet that may persuade people that these beasts do exist.

But I'm not a believer - I'm a total sceptic of everything - but if a Weasel can ride along on the back of a Woodpecker then I guess anything's possible ;)
 

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Yeah, obviously the size can be hard to pin down, I don't know how high up the bird was, and I didn't have a lot of time to watch.

It's possible it had something tangled on it's feet, but it really looked like a long tail with the spade shape at the end.

I've seen and photographed a blue heron, I'm pretty sure it wasn't that big, but with the feet back, maybe.
We have tons of grackles, but I don't think I've ever seen a great tailed grackle.
The magnificent frigatebird? I'm a little far inland for those, no?
 

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