Nova Scotia - Mr. Mokey has been behaving a bit oddly, frequently looking up after a massive black bird swooped down out of the sky, barely missing the Shelburne County cat.

"He's constantly looking skyward and has been acting strange ever since it happened," said Alice Whitehouse, Mr. Mokey's owner.

It seems the behemoth bird that tried to attack a Lunenburg County man, then his neighbour, recently has gone west.

"I guess Big Bird is (down) my way now but I did not know what the heck it was," Ms. Whitehouse said of her Tuesday afternoon encounter.

The following day, she read in The Chronicle Herald about a big black bird that went after Myles Rafuse in Crousetown about a month ago. The 79-year-old man ran backwards swiping at the estimated 60-centimetre-tall bird as it ran out of the woods at him. His 73-year-old neighbour, Goldie Stewart, said it swooped down as she was hanging out laundry, its claws barely missing her head.

Ms. Whitehouse was catching some sun on the front deck of her home in Little Harbour, just outside Lockeport, when she heard a strange noise.

"It was this whoomp, whoomp, just like a helicopter."

Then she saw a large jet-black bird swoop down at Mr. Mokey in the driveway, grazing its belly on the roof of the house as it came down, then on the roof of the barn as it flew off.

"I didn't think it would make it over the barn," she said.

Her first thought was: "That's the biggest crow I've ever seen.

"We've got some pretty big crows down here, but I've never seen anything like that.

"Honestly, I have not seen wings that big on anything around here. They were humongous."

Ms. Whitehouse believes it's the same bird responsible for the earlier attacks.

She planned to contact the Natural Resources Department to report what she had seen.

An official with the department's wildlife division said this week that given its size, ability to run and fly and aggressive nature, the mystery bird could be a once-domesticated turkey.

The editor of Nova Scotia Birds magazine said the bird's behaviour is "really odd," but he was able to rule out a number of possibilities.

"You're ruling out any birds of prey," said Blake Maybank. "They fly or perch but they don't really run. Not many birds can run, and if they can run, do run."

Mr. Maybank does not think it is a huge raven.

"This is not raven behaviour in the least."

And he doesn't think it's a turkey vulture, a species that has been spotted in Nova Scotia before.

"They're real wimps," he said. They clean up roadkill but hightail it at the slightest intrusion. "They're quite shy."

"It most fits with some wacko turkey," Mr. Maybank said.

A photograph would help a lot, but without one, Mr. Maybank said he thinks it's a turkey that's been let loose.

"No way does it sound like any native bird to Nova Scotia."

Whatever it is, Ms. Whitehouse said, she's a little nervous to go for her customary walks with Mr. Mokey. Even coyotes in the area don't make her as uncomfortable as this bird.

"(Coyotes) will run away; we were just sitting in the driveway, and it attacks us from the air."