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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Friday, May 01, 2009

BLOODY HELL HOLDSWORTH WAS RIGHT (but then again he usually is)

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/04/weirdest-parakeet-of-all-time.html?showComment=1241201400000#c1254041714754131875


Dan Holdsworth really is a fount of all knowledge...





THE LAZARUS LIZARD

http://wildlifemysteries.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/the-lazarus-lizards/


Have you ever heard of a “Lazarus” lizard?

No. They aren’t called that because they rose from the dead. There’s nothing really spectacular about them at all.

In fact, they are rather banal. In Europe, they are common enough to call them “wall lizards.” They are often seen basking on stone and concrete walls in the summer sun. However, these particular wall lizards aren’t in Europe at all. They are found in Southwestern Ohio and Northern Kentucky.

What’s a European lizard doing in the Ohio Valley?



Follow the link above, and `retrieverman` will tell you...

IT IS A BABY MERGANSER....

Jan Edwards writes:

"Ok times up.... just to put you out of your misery, I’ll tell you what it is: For a start they are diving ducks, belonging to the sawbill family. They are fish eaters, the adults devouring salmon and trout, and getting themselves into trouble with game fishermen. They live in fresh or salt water, and are most often seen at estuaries. They are gregarious, forming huge flocks in the Autumn, and are most commonly seen around the coastline. It’s a merganser.... "

I should have known, because this picture here (and the video below) were taken by me at Coniston Water in the Lake District in the summer of 2007. D'oh!

However Retrieverman got it right. Email me dude, and you shall get a prize!


DIDN'T WE DO WELL!

I just wanted to mark a rite of passage on the bloggo. Tonight we posted the 1000th article on the main blog. The daily bloggo was an idea that Tim Matthews and I came up with during a late night telephone conversation just after Christmas, but I don't think either of us realised how succesful it was going to be. At the moment we have an average of 2,000 hits a day on the network, most of them on the main bloggo page, and if we carry on at this rate we will have passed the half million mark sometime in October.
There is a hell of a lot happening behind the scenes, but a mixture of health, computer, equipment and family problems keep getting in the way so I am not able to move on as fast as I would otherwise like, but sufficient to say in the next week or so you will have the first real news of the Weird Weekend, and I will be posting a series of updates to the bloggodex (have I just invented another word here?) including dear Heather's sterling work on the aquatic monster archives.
The CFZ girls have been doing wonderful work at the moment. Emma deserves a knighthood for her work on WW sponsorship...

BETH IN THE NEWS

JAN EDWARDS SETS A CONUNDRUM


We took this baby bird in today. It has an egg-tooth, so only a few days old. It has downy feathers. It has webbed feet and a very pointed, serrated beak. It was fond in the market place of a small north east town, a long way from water. It squeaks.

I know what it is. Do you?

Jan Edwards, Head of Animal Care
Farplace Animal Rescue - the no-kill animal sanctuary
Farplace, Sidehead, Westgate, County Durham, DL13 1LE
www.farplace.org.uk
















OLL LEWIS: Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On Fridays, as well as updating you on the latest cryptozoology news from the CFZ daily cryptozoology news blog, I get to announce my tea of the week. As a British man I take my tea seriously and over the years have tried many different blends from different plantations across the world. There is a greater variety in the taste of tea than there is of coffee (a horrid drink that should only ever be drunk for functional reasons) and coco and out of all teas my absolute favourite is a white tea called Shou Mei (壽眉). It is not necessarily the highest quality tea or hard to come by in the West, if you know where to look, but man does it make a good cuppa and it’s my tea of the week, I urge you to try it. So, once you finish reading the news point your browser towards an internet tea shop or nip down to your local Chinese supermarket where you can make a huge saving on most online prices. And now, the news:

Is this yet another mysterious big cat attack?
More sightings of the roving black beast
‘Puma’ spotted in Ballymoney
And
Egypt orders slaughter of all pigs over swine flu

Seriously, the Egyptians are ‘sow’ing the seeds of stupidity here, outside of Mexico it’s humans that would pass the illness about not pigs.