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Haast's Eagle is a brain-aneurysm inducing species of gigantic man-eating winged monstrosities that became notorious among the Maori tribes of pre-colonial New Zealand thanks to their horrific propensity to silently dive-bomb down from the tree tops in absolute silence, crush the skulls of 450-pound beasts like a Volkswagen driving over a soda can, then fly off into the darkness clutching the tribe's women and children in a fist full of razor-sharp 4-inch talons so they could be slowly and painfully shredded to death at the beast's leisure.I have never laughed so hard at primitive man's fight against nature in my life. If this bird was around today he'd make one hell of a hunt...I mean seriously, you go into the woods and you hunt him and he hunts you. Anyway, read the rest of it here.
This is not a myth or a legend. This is a real thing that actually lived on Earth-One's material plane as late as 1600 AD.
Known as the "Tiger of the Skies", Haast's Eagles are one of the only birds to ever be the apex predator of an ecosystem, a distinction they hold mostly because there are no predatory mammals on New Zealand, but also because what the fuck is going to step to a pissed-as-hell mega-raptor so ungodly gigantulous that it's wings blacken the sky and its insanity-causing shrieks presumably caused deafness and incontinence in anything unlucky enough to hear it. Gigantic, feather-covered instruments of God's Unadulterated Fury, Haast's Eagles stood six feet tall, weighed a little over 35 pounds, and had a wingspan of roughly ten feet. These goddamned things were, no exaggeration, the size of hang gliders, tore ass through the densest jungles of New Zealand with the dexterity of a howler monkey, and boasted black, pointy, fuck-off claws that were about the same size as a modern-day Bengal tiger's.