Why can't I find the legendary birds after defeating the Elite Four in Let's Go?

Question

Glitch or is my game broken or am I stupid? in Pokemon lets go, I beated the elite four and went into the bird caves or whatever to catch the legendary birds but they were not there. Is this a glitch or....

Comments

Did you go into the Power Plant?

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Power plant, Seafoam Island, Victory Road - did you thoroughly check all these places???

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The easiest bird to find is Zapdos. If you go all the way to the end of the Power Plant, you should see it. If you don't, then there might be something wrong with your game.

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Does this count as not answering a clarifying question?

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Thanks for the flag. For the purpose of the question, just assume they checked all those locations thoroughly (which is at least implied in the question). It's not our problem if they didn't and the question wasn't particular about that.

Answer 1

You should be able to find the Legendary Birds at all times, assuming you have not either caught them or they haven't run from you (or vice versa). If they have fled from you, simply defeat the Elite 4 again. If this is your problem, you should be able to find them again. However, if you have already caught them, you won't find them again in their initial spawn locations. Instead, you can find them (albeit extremely rarely) out in the wild as flying encounters.