They were ungainly creatures with scoop snouts and enormous wingspans and cackles like gunshots.

We saw many birds, including a lammergeier, a type of vulture with an enormous wingspan, that soared overhead.

He pressed his cheek to the sand but kept his eyes on them as they blossomed from points bisected by lines into voracious mouths with enormous wingspans.

The strength, the beauty, the enormous wingspan of these creatures suggests to the musculature of a male dancer more readily than a ballerina in her white tutu.

"You should have seen those things coming in right at us over the lake," he recalled, flapping his extended arms to simulate their enormous wingspans.

When he did look up, he spied a couple of dragons circling overhead, so high that, even with their enormous wingspans, they seemed only dots, midges seen at arm's length.

They could see the enormous wingspans, the long tails snaking out behind, the cruel taloned feet hanging beneath the huge blue bodies.

There is a story that in April 1890, two cowboys in Arizona killed a giant birdlike creature with an enormous wingspan.

"Their enormous wingspan, their power, the violence that swans can erupt into - all that suggested male rather than female dancers," he said.

Ryan saw a great slim-necked white bird with an enormous wingspan flying majestically away over the burning motel.