Tuesday, January 13, 2015

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN HAS HIS HAT ON. HIP HIP HIP HOORAY

The Gonzo Daily - Tuesday 13th January
www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/about.html
 
I have a butterfly conundrum. The large tortoiseshell (Nymphalis polychloros) which has a range across Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. It is quite similar in appearance to the better known small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) which is one of the best loved of British butterflies, but it is actually far closer related to the Camberwell Beauty (Nymphalis antiopa) an extremely rare visitor to our shores which the late L Hugh Newman suggested that often arrived in Britain accidentally in shipments of wood from Scandinavia. The Small tortoiseshell was very close to extinction in the UK a couple of years ago, although I am glad  to say that it had made a fine recovery. let us hope that it continues. This decline was initially blamed on the predations of a parasitic fly Sturmia bella, but when more work was carried out it appears that this was not the primary reason for the small tortoiseshell's decline. However, something remarkably similar happened about a century ago when the population of Nymphalis polychloros which, until then, had been a reasonably well distributed and fairly common species across large swathed of the United Kingdom crashed, for reasons that remain obscure.  If you examine the contemporary reports of people like P.B.W.Allan it appears that the species made something of a recovery in the 1930s but crashed again in the following decade, and was largely considered to be extirpated from the UK by the 1950s, even though it was not declared to be extinct until the 1980s.i remember reading within the past four or five years that a naturalist at either a National Trust or Natural England property in south Devon was claiming that large tortoiseshells had bred there. But I am damned if I can find it! Does anyone have a link for this, or did I completely dream it?
 
 
The Gonzo Weekly #112
www.gonzoweekly.com
 
Joe Cocker, Osibisa, Rocket Scientists, Erik Norlander, Beatrles, Robert Plant, Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, Yes, Hawkwind, and Daevid Allen fans had better look out!
 
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#112) will soon be available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/. It has Rocket Scientists on the front cover, and an interview with the band inside, Jon lookls at the legendary unreleased Beatles music, we send Pete from Sendelica to a desert island, critique the new Robert Plant biography, and there are shows from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the titular submarine dwellers are still lost at sea, whilst Xtul are still causing havoc in the forest. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and manatees looking for booze (OK, nothing to do with alcoholic sirenians, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
 
Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
 
Issue 111 (Mice on Stilts cover)
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2015/01/gonzo-weekly-111.html
Issue 109/10 (Yusuf/Stevie Wonder cover)
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/12/gonzo-weekly-10910.html
Issue 108 (Merrell Fankhauser cover)
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/12/gonzo-weekly-108.html
Issue 107 (Ant-Bee cover)
 

All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
 
You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/
 

* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...
 
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…
 
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!
 

* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 55 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the infantile orange cat?
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1 comment:

  1. Kithra2:19 PM

    Is this the butterfly article you're looking for, from The Telegraph in January 2009:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/4141027/Butterfly-not-seen-in-wild-in-Britain-since-Second-World-War-breeding-again.html

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