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An eagle attempted to lift a little boy into the air during a bird show at Alice Springs in Australia

Eagle tries to carry off Australian boy

From the BBC

A wedge-tailed eagle tried to fly away with a terrified boy at a popular wildlife show in central Australia.

A crowd of stunned onlookers watched the enormous bird latch its talons on to the screaming boy’s head during a show at Alice Springs Desert Park.

Witnesses said the bird attempted to pick him up “like a small animal”.

The boy – believed to be between six and eight years old – escaped with a “superficial” gash to his face.

Christine O’Connell from Horsham in Victoria state was visiting the park with her husband on 6 July when the attack occurred.

She told the BBC the eagle flew straight for the boy from about 15m away.

The attack lasted for seconds before staff from the park intervened

“A fellow who was sitting closer said the little boy kept running his zipper up and down,” said Mrs O’Connell, who caught the attack on her camera.

Distracted by the noise, the eagle grabbed the boy’s green hoodie and attempted to lift him away before park staff moved in, Mrs O’Connell said.

The attack left the boy crying and bleeding, but his injuries were not severe.

A Victorian man who was in the crowd, Keenan Lucas, told the NT News the show was ended quickly after the attack.

“We’re at the bird show in the afternoon, having a great time and looking forward to seeing the wedge-tailed eagle come out for the finale,” he said.

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The boy suffered minor injuries in the attack and was taken for medical treatment

The Australian Wedge Tail Eagle is one of the biggest in the world. The 3rd biggest in fact. The American Bald Eagle being the 5th biggest.

These are both small compared to the legendary Thunderbird as described in the Native American legends.

Here’s a couple of stories about the Thunderbirds.

This one from Animal X Classic series 2.

From Animal X Natural Mystery Unit. Motherman, Thunderbirds, witches and other Unidentified Flying Creatures.

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Bones of a giant Moa bird found

By News from Elsewhere…
…as found by BBC Monitoring

Contractors at a site in southern New Zealand have made an unexpected find while digging a trench – dozens of bones belonging to a long-extinct species of giant bird.

Workers spotted the bones during excavations in an area of South Canterbury which was once swamp land, the Stuff.co.nz website reports. They’ve been identified as belonging to a female South Island giant moa, an enormous flightless bird which roamed the area for millennia. One of the bones is thought to belong to a smaller male moa.

Stumbling upon moa bones is increasingly rare, according to South Canterbury Museum director Philip Howe. “This is quite a significant find because in this day and age we’re not finding moa bones all round the place like people did maybe 100 years ago,” he tells the site. “A discovery is quite a chance thing – it’s not something you can just hope to go out and find.”

Project manager Dave Sutton says the small size of the trench dug by his team made the discovery even more unlikely. “It’s not every day you dig a hole and find a moa,” he says. “Only one small hole and this is the result.”

Among the nine species of moa, the largest stood at about 2m (6.5ft) tall and weighed a whopping 250kg (550lb), while others were closer to the size of a turkey. Unlike other flightless birds, moa had lost all trace of ever having wings. They were hunted to extinction after Polynesian colonists arrived in New Zealand around AD1300.

How the newly excavated moa met their end isn’t clear. But Mr Howe says finding remains of both a male and female “begs the question: was this the tragic outcome of a Sunday picnic at the swamp with the moa family?”

Moa

Moa, extinct or not?

The moa is thought to have been eaten to extinction by New Zealand’s Maori people. But there are those who disagree. Like the people who claim to have seen one. Here’s a story of two me who claim to have seen a moa on New Zealand’s South Island.

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