It's a photo, says the magazine, "that no-one knows quite whether they've seen or not... People have been talking about it for more than 30 years. A handful of people claim to have held a copy of it, but realized its significance only after their copy had been lost. A fair number of people have recollections of having seen this thing published in a book and many have vague recollections of having seen it somewhere at some time, but cannot remember just where."

Real-life photo or not, there are plenty of images of the symbolic bird that's larger by far than anything flying today. Ford Motors named one of its famous autos after the bird. Cub Scouts have memorialized its patch, totem, tent and craft designs. North American Native peoples have honored the thunderbird with artwork truly their own. And in Michigan, a photographer has even captured thunderbird in his mythical natural habitat --- the sky above us.

The www.indigenouspeople.org website recounts the thunderbird legend. According to legend, Thunderbird dates to two Passamaquoddy Indians who first came north to find the origin of thunder.

They came to high mountains that were said to perform magically, drawing apart, and closing together. "I will leap through the cleft before it closes, and if I am caught, you continue to find the origin of thunder," said one of the Indians.

He succeeded in passing through the mountains' cleft, but his companion was crushed in his attempt to follow. On the other side, the first Indian encountered a community of wigwams on a vast plain; these Indians put on wings and flew away over the mountains. When the Passamaquoddy told an elder about his quest for thunder, the plains Indians pounded him until his bones were broken, and remolded him into a new body with wings like thunderbird and sent him away in flight, the legend goes.

But he could not go home because of the huge enemy bird, Wochowsen,  who was terrorizing the Passamaquoddy peoples with his terrible winds. They broke his wing, and for many moons the air was stagnant, the sea became slime, and all of the fish died. In time, Wochowsen's wings were repaired, and Thunderbird overcame the huge enemy bird and balanced nature once again. And the lone Thunderbird's powerful lighting protects and keeps watch on all good Indians.

A similar legend is recounted in the Pacific Northwest, says Harry Edmonn, of the University of Washington, whose atmospheric sciences department has adopted the Thunderbird icon as its logo. Edmonn says the stories are adapted from Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest, by Ella E. Clark, published by the University of California Press in 1953.

As Edmonn tells it, "...Long ago, there was a sad time in the land of the Quillayute. For days and days, great storms blew. Rain and hail and then sleet and snow came down upon the land. The hailstones were so large that many of the people were killed.

The other Quillayute were driven from their coast villages to the great prairie, which was the highest part of their land. There the people grew thin and weak from hunger. The hailstones had beaten down the ferns, the camas, and the berries. Ice locked the rivers so the men could not fish. Storms rocked the ocean so the fishermen could not go out in their canoes for deep-sea fishing. Soon, the people had eaten all the grass and roots on the prairie; there was no food left.

As children died without food, even the strongest and bravest of  their fathers could do nothing. They called upon the Great Spirit for help, but no help came.”

The chief of the Quillayute once again called on the Great Spirit, and from silence and darkness "... came a great noise, and flashes of lightning cut the darkness. A deep whirring sound, like giant wings beating, came from the place of the setting sun. All of the people turned to gaze toward the sky above the ocean as a huge, bird-shaped creature flew toward them..." The bird's wings were twice as long as a war canoe, with feathers as long as a canoe paddle. "...It had a huge, curving beak, and its eyes glowed like fire. The people saw that its great claws held a living, giant whale..." They named it 'Thunderbird', and it lowered the whale to the ground before them, flew high in the sky into thunder and lightning.

“...Thunderbird and Whale saved the Quillayute from dying. The people knew that the Great Spirit had heard their prayer. Even today they never forget that visit from Thunderbird, never forget that it ended long days of hunger and death. For on the prairie near their village are big, round stones that the grandfathers say are the hardened hailstones of that storm long ago..." says Edmonn.

In legend, the Thunderbird's home is "... a cave in the Olympic Mountains, and he wants no one to come near it. If hunters get close enough so he can smell them, he makes thunder noise, and he rolls ice out of his cave. The ice rolls down the mountainside, and when it reaches a rocky place, it breaks into many pieces. The pieces rattle as they roll farther down into the valley...."

And his battles with Killer Whale left treeless prairies on the Olympic Peninsula wherever the battles were fought, and that's why Killer Whale now dwells in the deep ocean.

That brings us back to the Fortean Times, suggesting, perhaps, that the Indian legends passed down through the decades were spiritual interpretations of a rare, live species of bird.

Might there be, in some old attic, a photo of the animal? "The handful who do remember (a photo) say they saw a photocopy of it in the hands of Ivan T. Sanderson, the famous naturalist and Fortean author who died in 1973," says the magazine. "Back in 1966 he had been given a photocopy --- not known for their high quality of reproduction --- and here is how the photograph was described:

"An immense bird was shown nailed to the wall of a large barn. Before it stood six grown men wearing Western clothing with their arms outstretched touching fingertip to fingertip. By this measure the bird appeared to have a wingspan of about 36 feet."

Sanderson is said to have loaned his photocopy to two young men who traveled into the heart of northern Pennsylvania to investigate Thunderbird reports in that region, and the photo went missing. "The hunt for the elusive picture has been confused almost beyond rescue with a strange story that issued from the Arizona Territory in 1890.

“The original story appeared first in the Tombstone "Epitaph" on 26 April 1890,” says Fortean Times, describing the tale of two of the cowboys who were in the original photo. According to Harry McClure of Colorado Springs, Colorado, who was a young man when the two cowboys were still living, the "Epitaph" account gave exaggerated and false particulars.

"McClure remembered the two cowboys as they were well known for  the strange encounter they had reported. McClure saw the cowboys and had friends who knew them personally. McClure said he and other people who resided there did not think the story was a hoax. It was believed by the people who knew them.

After 60 years he had forgotten their names, but remembered what they said about a huge flying beast with a 20 to 30 foot wingspan." says the magazine. The two cowboys said the bird's "eyes were like saucers; its two legs and feet up at the front part of its body were the size of those of a horse; its hide was leathery, instead of  feathery. It lit on the ground once at a safe distance from the two cowboys, but it took to the air again soon afterwards only to come down again a second time."

And while Fortean Times reports the quest for the photographic evidence of the great Thunderbird, a Michigan photographer has, perhaps, captured him in his native element: as a lightning strike from the bowels of thunderclouds in the sky.

"The lightning of a midnight storm has sculptured a Great Bird in the night sky over a beautiful bay on Northern Lake Michigan," says Jim O'Neil. "It was claimed this mystical bird was the connecting link between the Indian People and the Great Spirit --- a great protector, and showed himself upon their landscape, their waters, and their great natural cathedral."

O' Neil says the Thunderbird photo (which he sells in a limited edition), has become the “epitome" of all his work. His Upper Michigan Peninsula Shores Gallery features a series of his photographs of Thunderbird lightning here.