Which one?
Was working with custombikemechanics as an airplane tour guide to fly with and view butterflies in the air.
After seeing a lot of butterfly they outpaced us and were were in the air seeing if the butterflies were going to turn around and come close again... and that's when I saw the tiger bird, flying almost straight at me, he got to about 20 ft away and then turned and kept that distance while checking me out, then he flew off. He was between 5k-10k ft altitude, during the whole thing...
Was awesome!!
But the bummer was that I was so nervous when he was flying at me that I forgot I had a camera strapped to my dick... All I could think about was, "what am i gonna eat when i'm back on the ground" and "what am i gonna do when it turns out i don't have any money?" I could have had epic nat geo photographs to frame on my wall and tell everyone "I took that picture"
Ohwell... maybe I'll get another chance someday, though its kind of doubtful I'll ever get that close to one again. Only other time I've seen a tiger bird is while I'm on a tower and someone points one out... you can see their shadow/silhouette from the tower.
It was hard to tell the size because there was nothing else to compare it to in the sky, but I'm guessing it was about 11-13ft in length and around 200-250+ lbs. A lot bigger and more intimidating than the white tip reef birds that are fairly common to spot while halo-ing around here (Island of Burg Krems, aka best clan, join or ban est. 1987).
