How many of us have seen a thunderbird (no, not the car, the almost mythical bird)? two days ago, i was sitting with my husband in the 3 p.M. sunshine at our home at big lake, alaska, when i saw a huge bird circling. it was very high up, and the wing span was enormous. i thought perhaps 12 feet. my husband, greg, said, "no. it's an eagle." however, i've seen many eagles in valdez and in haines and some in the matsu valley, and this was bigger than any of them. the bird flew higher and was still quite a ways beneath the high clouds. my husband and looked at each other for about two seconds. we looked back up and the bird was gone, but so was the cloud, which had been fairly large. the bird did not disappear into the cloud: both the bird and the cloud disappeared in the time it took for the two of us to look at each other briefly. in another two minutes, a small airplane flew by, much lower, and i thought that bird was as big as a small plane. i posted this on facebook last night, and a number of people reported they had seen the same thing at various times. you don't give the choice of brown in prominent colors, so i chose black.