Millions of years ago giant birds of prey ruled the Americas - the Teratorns. But our understanding of these animals has changed greatly in the last few decades.
The later teratorns that co-existed with the ancestors of the Native Americans could be the inspiration for the Thunderbirds that show up in the legends of some tribes, particularly those in Illinois and the Pacific Northwest. On Lost Tapes it says that in those legends the Thunderbirds were gods in the form of "supernaturally" large birds, that the flapping of their wings created the sound of thunder meant to scare humans away from their territory, and that they were said to attack and carry away children in their talons. But on the Birdzilla episode of MonsterQuest a Native American man (can't remember the tribe name) says that in the legends of his tribe, one type of Thunderbird is helpful and the other type is dangerous. There's a similar legend in New Zealand of a monster bird called the Pouakai or Hokioi, it's found to be based on the Haast's eagle, it was one of the largest eagles to ever exist and it didn't go extinct until sometime around the year 1400. It could take down giant flightless moa birds, it may also have hunted humans after the Maori people arrived in around 1280, and the speed and force of it swooping and attacking was equal to the speed and force of a cinder block falling from a tall building. The Maori were so terrified of the eagle that they depicted it as a sacred totem animal, told stories of it carrying people away, and they saw its cry as a portent of death and war.
As well as having some truly vast wingspans (& wing areas), these birds would have been among the highest flying as well. Their (likely) distantly related descendants, the Rüppell's Griffon Vulture (in modern day Africa), have been observed flying at the astonishing height of 11,300 Meters/37,000 Feet - which is higher than the airline cruising height of 10,700 Meters/35,000 Feet!
In some ways they were like modern day military drones, flying along for hours at such heights which make them near invisible to the ground, before leisurely swooping down to kill their oblivious prey (as noted in the video, with their beaks not their limited talons).
These modern birds actually have a series of fascinating mutations which allow them to survive in the freezing cold / oxygen poor environment, and it would be wonderful if we were able to identify any of them in this remarkable, ancient clade of flying mega-fauna: The Teratornithidae.
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