On the BC coast, snow is rare enough that two siblings and their boyfriends ran out into the backyard to play in it one winter evening just after sunset. Suddenly the sister froze. Behind a tree, she said, sat a large creature with black wings folded down around its hunched body, watching them. As she walked toward it, it turned and covered its face with a wing, then moved behind the tree and was gone.
Nobody believed her. A raven, they said, or a heron, or a shadow. But she was badly shaken, and they all went inside.
A few months later the same four were in the main bedroom, whose French doors open onto a sundeck overlooking the yard. The witness's boyfriend opened the doors and saw an enormous bird drop off a branch in a tree on the bank behind the yard. "Holy shit, that eagle is huge," he said. Our witness looked up in time to see it fly for a couple of seconds before it vanished behind more trees. Eagles are common there, but this was far bigger, completely black, with a wingspan estimated at nearly 14 feet. The sister and her boyfriend saw only the branch still bouncing.
To our witness it looked like a human with wings, and the boyfriend, who doesn't believe in such things, said the same. Then the sister reminded everyone of the creature behind the tree, and this time they all believed her. They also remembered the family's old dog, who died that January, growling and pacing on the deck at night at something in the yard.
