Pterosaur Eyewitness

This past July 23rd, I set up a game camera under the phone line where the “Lakewood ropen” was seen perching (before it flew away). Since then I have examined over six thousand photos. As of November 11, 2012, I have not yet seen any obvious image of any pterosaur, but I submit the following photos as evidence that this is a serious investigation. I hope that the next few months will bring us the success we need.

We delighted in the first photo: clear image & wide coverage (July 23, at about 7:24 p.m.)

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Image #70 (night shot with infrared lights) shows the end of the tail of the family dog.

Many of the photos shot by the game camera were apparently triggered by Rex, the family’s black Lab. It means that much of my time examining photos results in discovering all the things this dog does by the back fence bordering the storm channel. This is not 100% negative, for this dog becomes excited at more things than rats and possums: He seems to get excited when the flying creature comes by.

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image #101 – It looks like I turned on my glow eyes to search for the ropen. Actually this camera has many infrared lights that illuminate the area for IR recording, making eyes glow. I was there to gather the latest images from the camera.

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Image #862 – Tractor in the storm channel relates to maintenance work clearing away excess vegetation hanging over the walls. This photo was recorded on August 28th, in the afternoon.

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When the dog runs through this area, it creates a thick dust storm. This time the dust was illuminated by the IR lights. We can barely see Rex in this photo.

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A song bird triggered this game camera recording on October 3, 2012

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Rex appears very agitated about something in the storm channel

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Image #5246 – apparently a possum walks along the chain link fence at night

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Horizontal Tail Vane of Pterosaurs

An eyewitness recently made it clear that the flying creature she had recently observed had a long tail and a horizontal tail vane at tail’s end. I have interviewed this lady several times, face-to-face, during the past two weeks. She appears highly credible.

Manta Ray Misidentification?

A Manta ray fish, of an ocean or sea, may jump as high as ten feet above the surface, perhaps. But all those jumping fish fall back into the sea, demonstrating that they are not strange featherless flying creatures.

I have encountered several sighting reports from Hawaii this year (mostly either email or blog-post comment I’ve received from eyewitnesses). But the encounter described in a post of the s8intcom blog now deserves attention and comparison with other sightings in Hawaii.

Two soldiers were looking up at the night sky, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, for a strange creature was flying through some scattered thin clouds. Both men could see from the way it flew through those clouds that it was at about the same altitude as a jet that had recently flown through those same clouds. The distance estimate that gave them allowed for a size estimate: wingspan of about twenty feet.

This was late in 1999, in what the soldiers called the “Kahuku range,” on the northeast side of Oahu. A bright full moon illuminated the flying creature, which had a long tail about 25% of the ”size of its body,” which I assume refers to the length, which one soldier estimated was 8-10 feet. That would make the tail at least two feet long, possibly even a little over three feet. Of course all this is assuming the distance estimate was accurate; the flying creature may have been closer or further away.

The soldier who reported the encounter was impressed by the gracefulness of the creature’s flight. It flapped its wings only about twice per minute, as it hovered and dived through the clouds. Both men were impressed with its resemblance to a “pterodactyl,” although one of them held out the possibility that the tail may have had feathers.

Now compare that flying creature with those described in other reports from Hawaii:

West side of the Big Island of Hawaii

Sighting in 2008

Four years ago, a woman and her nephew saw an apparent pterosaur on the west side of the Big Island of Hawaii, in a subdivision overlooking the Kona International Airport at Keahole. Both eyewitnesses described the flying creature:

• Wingspan of 3-4 feet
• Long sharp beak
• Featherless wings, more bat-like than bird-like
• Coloring somewhat “fleshy” or brownish-pink-gray
• Long featherless tail distinct from its long legs
• The tail had a “diamond” on its tip
• The creature flew only about 80 feet above their heads
• It was gliding more than flapping

 Sightings in 2012

Three sightings in Kona (Big Island of Hawaii) by members of one family—that makes this area a prime location for sightings, deserving serious study and watchfulness.

• Wingspans of about five to six feet
• Dark color

More details are needed from these eyewitnesses in Kona.

Pterodactyl in Hawaii

This “bird” had very long angular wings that swept out and away from its body. A long body and either a long neck with a pointed head or a very elongated head on a shorter neck it was hard to distinguish that feature.

Flying Creature

But “giant bat” is not really a reasonable explanation. In Papua New Guinea, the Flying Fox fruit bat is large . . . but that bat is huge only in comparison with most of the bats. The “ropen” is much larger, with . . . a wingspan [sometimes more than] twenty-five feet.

Sighting (summer of 2012) in New York

A few weeks ago, my Facebook group “Living Pterosaurs of the World” had a comment from an eyewitness of a “pterodactyl” in New York City. (By the way, this FB group is larger than average and fairly active.)

“I saw something that I almost couldn’t believe and the pictures of pterodactyls are the only thing that comes close to what I saw last week. I live in NYC not in California. Me and my cousin both saw it at 6:30 pm in the clear bright sky it came very very close. We were both in shock.”

Jonathan David Whitcomb: Did it have a tail?

“I dont remember a tail but the wings weren’t widely spread out and it seemed to just hover in the sky. It swooped down really close then pulled back, hovered, and then went up and over the house next door. It was grey in color and had a strange shaped head like the pterodactyl pictures. Its stomach was hanging low. All I could think was dragon. I don’t remember seeing a tail.”

 Buffalo, New York (2007)

In Live Pterosaurs in America (third edition of my nonfiction book), I wrote of a report I had received from another eyewitness in New York state:

Also in the Northeast (east of Buffalo, New York), a “pterodactyl” was seen. I received this email in mid-2007, just weeks after the sighting:

“ . . . my friend and I were canoeing in the creek accessed from my back yard, when we sighted a very strange creature that we had both thought to be a prehistoric bird. Immediately, I thought ‘pterodactyl.’ It was a greyish color with no apparent feathers. I remember the wing span and the head shape but I don’t recall the tail end.

“It was only visible for a few moments before it disappeared into the tree line. It coasted in movement; I don’t recall the wings flapping. It was off into the distance, so size is difficult to determine. I would estimate the wing span to be six feet. . . .”

Camden, Maine (2001)

[also from the book LPA] . . . a creature with “leathery” wings was reported to have flown over a residential neighborhood. The wingspan was estimated at twenty-four feet, but this estimate was not from a wild guess: The creature flew just above the roof of a house.

Little Known Pterodactyl Sightings

“I heard a loud whooshing noise moving in the air to my right. I saw a huge pterodactyl. It circled my house six times and once it turned its head and looked at me. By the sixth time, it was somewhat lower.” [Rhode Island]

The other day, somebody asked me, on Facebook, if I plan on returning to Papua New Guinea. (Many of my friends know of my ropen expedition in 2004.) I have no plans for visiting that far-away country for a simple reason: sightings are reported within fifty miles of my home in Southern California, even a sighting in my own city of Long Beach.

I recently received indications that a home owner (a location secret for now) will allow me to place security video cameras in a backyard, over a storm channel where a ropen seems to occasionally visit. This potential 24/7 surveillance will be better than the system I have been using in a backyard in Lakewood, California. In contrast to that slow-response game camera, the security video cameras can catch and record movement immediately, rather than only after a couple of seconds.

Lakewood, California, Investigation

It’s no secret that I have been monitoring a backyard in Lakewood, for the past two months. But the game camera has a slow trigger: It begins recording about two seconds after the triggering event. That’s great for photographing a deer that walks in front of a camera in a forest, but not great for photographing a storm channel that a ropen has just flown through and out of.

Nevertheless, I continue to hope that the ropen that was seen by an eyewitness this past June will, on some day or some night, stop at the fence where we believe it sometimes enters a neighbors overgrown backyard. It might stay long enough for the game camera to capture its image.

Storm Channel Conjecture

I don’t recall any eyewitness ever reporting anything like a pterosaur flying through a storm channel; nevertheless circumstances suggest at least one or two or three or more have done so in Southern California. Too many sightings have been close to drainage canals, especially the June, 2012, sighting in Lakewood. The lady saw the “pterodactyl” or “dragon” as it was sitting on a phone line almost directly over the storm channel at the back of her backyard.

Many more Southern California sightings could be mentioned, for many of them were close to storm channels. Why would nocturnal ropens not use those fly-through freeways at night? Look at it from another perspective: We would we have hundreds of eyewitnesses reporting sightings in the Los Angeles area (instead of just a few), if such creatures regularly flew overhead. Even at night, in Los Angeles County there are too many millions of people who could be observing flying pterosaurs, if those creatures did not use those storm channels to fly and search for rats and other yummy food.

Of course it’s possible that very few of those flying creatures live in Los Angeles County. Am I stretching this too far? Nobody has reported to me that a ropen flies through a storm channel in Southern California, but I believe that’s what ropens do at night? I understand that it appears too speculative, but think about this: How many mountain lions live in areas of Southern California near where people live but almost nobody ever sees a mountain lion! Some creatures keep away from people.

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Sighting Near the Traffic Circle in Long Beach

At the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Lakewood Boulevard, in Long Beach, we encounter the Traffic Circle, more frightening to some drivers than a large ropen:

Actually, traffic circles are not dangerous to those who have driven in Europe, where they are common. Drivers entering the circle give right-of-way to cars already in the circle; blend into the traffic as you enter the circle, and do not stop if you can safely slow down a bit instead. Sometimes incoming traffic need hardly slow down at all, but keep alert. The main danger in Long Beach is probably when a driver with no traffic-circle experience comes upon it unawares and slams on the brakes or slams into a car already in the circle.

How does that relate to flying pterosaurs? Its in the location of this particular traffic circle.

After interviewing the Lakewood eyewitness earlier this year and placing a game camera in her backyard, I longed for another eyewitness to come forward in this part of Southern California. I prayed that somebody would contact me, with a sighting that would confirm that a ropen might fly through one or more storm channels in or near my home city of Long Beach. That prayer was answered in a way I found interesting.

I felt impressed to look again at the storm channels that wind through parts of Long Beach. On Google Map, I followed (going upstream) the channel that cut through the university. It went further than I had realized, appearing to begin close to the Traffic Circle. Then I remembered a sighting report that I had received years earlier.

When the lady contacted me, I struggled with what appeared almost unbelievable. She told me she had seen a pterodactyl near the Traffic Circle, not just any traffic circle: the one in Long Beach. I had traveled half way around the world to search for ropens on a remote tropical island, and now some lady tells me that a “pterodactyl” was flying in my own home town. I’m sure I responded with kindness (it was years ago; I recall little), but I secretly considered the possibility that the lady had some kind of problem.

Now I see. Over the past eight years, I have received a number of sighting reports from various parts of Southern California: perhaps twelve. I have also learned of other sightings and possibly-related circumstances and observances in others areas of California and in other states in the western United States. It was just a matter of time before I received one or two reports close to my home. I no longer have a problem with it. A sighting close to my home is blended into other reports from Southern California. There is no violent collision with common sense.

What is a ropen?

In my book Searching for Ropens, I gave an arbitrary definition of the creature: “any featherless creature that flies in the Southwest Pacific, and has a tail-length more than 25% of its wingspan.” That definition is used on Wikipedia, sounding almost like a scientific definition, but I meant for it to be just a general clue about the nature of the general kind of animal.

Horizontal Tail Vane

An eyewitness recently made it clear that the flying creature [an apparent ropen or Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur] she had recently observed had a long tail and a horizontal tail vane at tail’s end. I have interviewed this lady several times, face-to-face, during the past two weeks. She appears highly credible.