Well if it doesn't appear in the video that kinda works against the photo :S
I looks to be of some size next to the funnel, so it would be odd if it wasn't caught by the vid cam.

The only thing I could find from the images on various sites, was that almost all exif data is gone. However one of images had a +1 to exposure.
This tells me along with the grain that lighting conditions would have been poor at the time and he probably shot the image with a "slow" shutter speed.

Get something small going in front of the lens and with a slow speed you got yourself an elongated object.

To say it short... it could be anything.

Originally posted by flice


To say it short... it could be anything.

The tornado( or funnel or whatever ) doesn't appear large or strong enough to be throwing large objects about, so I reckon it's most likely an out of focus bird that's fairly close to the camera.