October 31, 2011

Wyoming County

This is the report as provided by Dan, the witness:

I was driving on RT 11 in Factoryville, PA today around 2:45 pm. It was sunny out almost 50 degrees (41.56951, -75.79923) heading west , I looked to the south west in the sky, about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile away, (if you look on Google Maps it would be to the lower left were there is a good track of woods and 3 pole lines running through the woods) I notice something in the sky, I thought it was a hand glider, It was shaped strange like a “V” flying backwards, and it had like a head and a neck sticking out, Then I saw it turning really tight and was thinking how cool it looked, then it started flapping it’s wings and it freaked me out, I never saw a bird look that big especially from that distance before.

I was trying to slow down but there were cars behind me and I would have to go down the road and turn around and really was no where to pull over to see it again. The shape while it was gliding was very strange, it seemed the wings tapered all the way down to nothing, not to a tail. I’m 46 yrs old and lived and hunted in pa my whole life and saw turkey vultures, turkeys, great horned owls, cranes, and eagles. this seemed much bigger than any of them. It really sank in how big it was as I drove down the road, there some crows flying about 75 yards away, they looked like a spec compared to the other one, at that was at least(probably farther) 800 yards.

If I didn’t see the wings flap i would have passed it off as a hand glider or one of those giant kites. A hand glider is around 30 ft across, so I’d say about that size. it looked like a hand glider flying backwards. if you ever spooked a turkey out of its roost and you watched glide to a landing, they just look so big when there flying. this thing looked that big and it was at least a 1/2 mile away. And when it was flapping it just didn’t look like a normal bird would flap its wings.

Actually, I thought I was off with the distance and went on Google map and used the distance drawing tool, I was pretty close , , It’s a little over a 1/2 mile .and I watched for 35 to 40 seconds(had to glance at the road in front of me a couple times).I slowed down to about 40 mph while i was looking at it. I know the area well, It’s in route to where I hunt and I drive by there a couple times a week this time of year . Again, if I didn’t see the wings flap, I would have written it off as a hand glider or one of those giant kites. It was smaller than a plane but much bigger than a turkey vulture.

The wing shape is what really caught my eye, the wing tips were farther ahead of it’s head and it was gliding and it didn’t taper down to a tail, it went to almost a point. If you took a hand glider, turned the person around so there feet would be pointing towards the tip and they were flying it backwards, all black, it would be a close match. I don’t know if the wings kept that shape as they were flapping, It was flying away from me when i seen them flap. It seemed that the flaps were slow and long, on the bottom of the stoke it seemed to go farther towards the ground.