American Monsters: The History of America’s Most Persistent Urban Tales about Strange Birds, Serpents and Wolfmen

by Charles River Editors

A mistake is difficult to accept. Audubon was generally very careful about describing and measuring each species he found, and his description of Washington’s Eagle is no exception, providing a meticulously detailed account of the huge bird’s appearance, color, and plumage. Subsequently, some ornithologists claimed Audubon had actually been mistaken, and what had been shot and studied was actually an immature bald eagle (the bird Audubon examined had predominantly brown plumage, as do immature bald eagles). The problem with that theory was its size, as no bald eagle has ever had close to the wingspan Audubon described, and certainly not an immature specimen. There is, of course, another possibility: Audubon was correct in his description and painting of a very large raptor, but that would have been very rare in the early 19th century, and they may have become extinct soon after the publication of Birds of America. Was it possible that the sightings of this bird led to the Native American legend of the thunderbird?