Once Upon a Time in Texas: Gigantic Mythical Bird Sightings

Let's take a trip back in time.   The time was January 1976.

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This was the time when the internet was not even a coherent thought.  All you had was word of mouth, radio, and newspapers.  If you were lucky someone caught it on camera. However, in this instance, no photographic proof, but multiple newspaper clippings.

Back in January 1976 multiple places in Texas reported the sighting of a strange large menacing bird like creature.

According to Rob Morphy's article on True Horror Stories of Texas, a young girl named Tracey Lawson and her cousin Jackie Davies saw a giant bird while playing in their backyard in Harlingen on New Year's Day 1976 a man named Tom Waldon, found tracks of a big bird in Harlingen on January 2, 1976.

Then on January 7, 1976, in San Benito, Texas Police Officer Arturo Padilla saw what appeared to be a giant bird in the lights of his police car.    It was described as 5 ft tall with a 12-foot wingspan.

The First Attack

According to Cryptopia, Armando Gimaldo was attacked by the creature on January 14, 1976, in Raymondville, Texas.   He was walking outside when heard loud flapping and he saw a creature with talon claws.  The creature grabbed Gimaldo's shoulders, knocking him down.  He described the creature as gorilla-faced with leathery, bat-like skin.

The Del Rio News-Herald reported on Monday, January 25, 1976,  two boys fishing at the San Felipe Creek on Friday, January 22, 1976, saw the bird.  They described it as black and very big.   A man named, Jasper Kilroy, spotted the bird at 5:45 am on Saturday, January 23, 1976, in his backyard.   He described the bird as having long legs, a long neck, not feathers, and resembled a stork.  He described the color as greyish blue and appeared cold and about to starve.

According to an article in The Daily Review on January 22, 1976, the bird was spotted in Eagle Pass.   The bird was described as 6 feet tall, brown/black body, bright red eyes, and the wings of a bat. A 21-year-old man, named Evancisco Magallenez claimed to be attacked by this creature on January 21, 1976.

In February 1976, 3 teachers who were driving three separate cars spotted the flying creatures.  One described the bird-like creature as being as big as a Piper Cub airplane and said it resembled a pteranodon.  The other teacher described the creature as having a huge breast, a bony structure, and glided.

Was it spotted anywhere other than South Texas?

Other, than a few articles talking about South Texas and the Bird, nothing else shows that the bird made it to Amarillo.

What was this creature?

Was it pre-historic?  Did a lingering dinosaur survive until the 70s?

Was it a mythical creature?  Was it the Mothman, Blackbird of Chernobyl , batsquatch, or Thunderbird?

Was it something not from this country like a Jabiru?

Whatever the creature was it disappeared softly into the night.  Maybe not so softly.