I recently received the following account:
I live in North Pole, Alaska. I was driving to work on February 1st 2017. It was about 5:30am it was a balmy -16 degrees. I was on the phone with my mother who lives in South Carolina, and because of the four hour time difference it works out well to call her then. But I was driving west down Chena Hot Springs Road headed toward Fairbanks, I was was cresting over one of the hills when I was looking at the dark purplish blue sky when I saw the profile of what looked to be a Pterosaur flying just above the trees going from south to north. It looked to be about 10-12 ft long but I cannot give a wing span because of the way it was flying but I did see it flap its massive wings once to rise above the trees on the opposite side of the road. The sighting may have been 3-5 seconds max, but I know what I saw. All I saw was the outline, so I can not give you any other information on color or if it had feathers. If you have any further questions please feel free to email me. JPC
NOTE: I contacted the witness and asked him to forward any further information that he remembers from the sighting. There is a history of huge birds reported over Alaska...most are described as over-sized eagles or other raptors. The most notable was the John Bouker sighting from October 2002:
A bird described by witnesses as being as a big as a light airplane and looking like a pterodactyl was this weekend becoming Alaska's version of the Loch Ness monster.
News of the "bird" broke after sightings by a bush pilot, his passengers, and a bulldozer operator on the ground below. It had previously been spotted by villagers in the remote south-western corner of Alaska.
All said that the creature was at least four times the size of the Bald Eagle, America's national symbol. John Bouker, the pilot, spotted it about 1,000ft from his Cessna 207 as he flew towards the village of Manokotak and calculates the creature's wingspan at being 14 or 15 feet, roughly the length of one of his own wings.
Phil Schemf, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, said that reports of an enormous bird had reached his office. "As far as we know," he said, "nothing with a 14ft wingspan has been alive for the last 100,000 years or so."
Scientists say it may be a Steller's Sea Eagle, the largest known eagle, which may have strayed from its usual habitat in north eastern Siberia. It is the largest species of eagle with a wingspan that can reach eight feet. One of the birds was a regular visitor to Alaska in the 1980s.
Mr Bouker, who has been flying over Alaska for 22 years, insists that the bird he saw was a great deal larger, and was entirely brown - ruling out both Bald and Steller's eagles. "You have got to realize that the thing I saw I mistook for another Cessna coming up on me. This was big, big, big. I have seen maybe 100,000 eagles, and I know that this was an awful lot bigger than an 8ft wingspan. You would not want to have your children out with this guy around," he said.
Live Pterosaurs in America: Not extinct, flying creatures of cryptozoology that some call pterodactyls or flying dinosaurs or prehistoric birds
A Menagerie of Mysterious Beasts: Encounters with Cryptid Creatures
Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy
The Monster Book: Creatures, Beasts and Fiends of Nature
