Campfire Creeps – South America’s Big Birds

Sightings of enormous birds and legends detailing their existence are known all across the world.
Today I am taking a look at two specific cases from Patagonia and Peru, respectively.

Kélenken - What's in a Name?

The Aónikenk people of Argentina and Chile have a legend that talks about an evil spirit of the cold
by the name of 'Kélenken', which is described as a giant black bird of prey. This entity is said to
appear during painful childbirths to feed on the tears of the mothers and to bewitch the children
using its supernatural cackling. This malevolent being is described as a flying bird, whereas the
creature commonly recognised under its name nowadays is a prehistoric flightless predatory bird.
The sightings we will be discussing today deal with the spirit's flightless namesake as opposed to the
actual demon.

A Chilean Jesuit priest known as Alonso de Ovalle produced a

map that has been dated to 1641 - and it depicts animals such
as llamas and rheas with an accurate scale, but also shows
something resembling an enormous raptor standing on a
steppe. This bizarre image (pictured) resembles an extinct bird
of the higher classification Phorusrhacoidea - of which
Kelenken is a genus. These animals were flightless predators
that could reach 9.8ft tall in some cases. Interestingly, a
Professor F. B. Loomis released an article in the New York
Times in 1922 discussing cryptozoological occurences in
Patagonia - mostly living plesiosaurs - but also noted that
several local cowboys 'sometimes talk of great wingless birds'.
He attributed this to their drunken hallucinations, but how
could these mainly illiterate men have known about the history
of terror birds in the region if not from personal experience?

If these bizarre events are the sum of something more than

coincidence, then they could serve to provide evidence that
the terror birds may have still roamed Patagonia until roughly
100 years ago.

Ghastly Griffins of Peru

In the 15th century, there were reports of a gigantic creature described as a 'condor-griffin'. Pedro
Cieza de León, a Spanish conquistador and chronicler, noted that in Perú during the 1540s there
were 'some very big condors that almost look like griffins some attack lambs and small guanaco in
the fields'. The Andean Condor has been known to steal children and guanacos (llamas), and the
local Tehuelche culture has a myth in which a demigod plucks the feathers from the condor's head
as punishment for stealing children. The general Patagonia area was also home to Argentavis
Magnificens, the largest condor ever known to science - which would have had a 7 meter wingspan.
If one of these extinct giants had survived into the 15th century then it could easily account for Cieza
de León's report.

Sources: 

http://patagoniamonsters.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/flying-creatures-strange-birds-part-3.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1922/03/11/archives/seeing-things-in-patagonia.html

La Crónica del Perú by Pedro Cieza de León