The Rio Grande Valley "Big Bird" Wave

Late 1975. The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Two deputies near Harlingen had an early morning encounter with a bird with "a 10-foot wingspan gliding over their patrol cars." It was quickly explained away as a large pelican. Rumours were already circulating in Robstown. In San Benito, Police Chief Ted Cortez later said the first report came from "a man who rushed terrified into the police station." Then January 1976 arrived.

New Year's Day. Harlingen. Tracey Lawson, 11, and a cousin, Jackie Davies, 14, saw a "bird" on the ground near a resaca by the yard. Five feet tall. Dark, with a bald head, a sharp beak and a "face like a gorilla's." The next day, Tom Waldon found three-toed tracks about 8 inches across.

January 7. About 8:30 pm. Alverico Guajardo, 35, was eating dinner in a trailer near Brownsville when something struck the corner of the mobile home like "a sandbag." Guajardo took a knife and drove a station wagon round to the back, so the headlights lit the creature. What followed were "three terrifying minutes eye to eye" with a "strange animal, 4 feet tall, eyes like silver dollars, wings like a bird and a face like a bat." It made a terrible pulsing noise from its throat. Its beak never moved. "It's got wings like a bird, but it's not a bird," Guajardo said. "That animal is not of this world."

In San Benito, officers Arturo Padilla and Homero Galvan, in separate squad cars, each saw a huge white bird gliding without a single flap of its wings. "The wingspan I guess was about like a pretty good-sized car, about 15 feet or so," Padilla said. "I've done a lot of hunting, but the thing was really oversized."

Mid January. Raymondville. Armando Grimaldo, 26, was outside when the sound of great, flapping wings came from above. "I felt some wind and looked up and this big bird attacked me." It scratched and tore at Grimaldo's clothes. Grimaldo hid under a bush and was taken to Willacy County Hospital in shock. Later descriptions gave the attacker huge red eyes, no beak, and blackish-brown, leathery, featherless skin.

The reports kept coming. Two sisters saw the creature at a watering hole in Brownsville. Soldiers reported it near Poteet. In Eagle Pass, Francisco Magallanez, 21, reported an attack, and Dr. Arturo Bates examined the shoulder marks. Near Del Rio, Jasper Kilroy described long legs, no feathers and a greyish-blue colour. KRIO radio in McAllen offered a $1,000 reward for capture. The Brownsville Herald reported rewards for its protection.

Wildlife experts suggested a large stork. Then, on February 12 and 13, a film of "a 4-foot tall silvery-blue bird" was broadcast around Texas. Don Farst, curator at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, identified it as a great blue heron. On February 13, 1976, the Valley Morning Star ran "Legend of Big Bird is Dead." Cryptozoologists still read the reports as pterosaurs. Others tie the wave to La Lechuza, the Mexican owl-witch legend.

The legend did not stay dead. On February 24, three Southside ISD teachers, Patricia Bryant, David Rendon and Marsha Dahlberg, stopped their cars south of San Antonio to watch two pterodactyl-like animals over cattle. One said it was "as big as a Piper Cub airplane." Bryant later matched it to Pteranodon in a book. Ken Gerhard's *Big Bird! Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters* and the documentary Pájaro: The Raymondville Terror keep the Valley's Big Bird story alive.