12th CENTURY CHINESE BIRD MYSTERY

Regular readers will note that Robert Schneck has a habit of sending us interesting things. Today he wrote:

Hi Jon,

This item isn't new, but I thought you might like to see it.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/6670503.html

I've looked at a few other articles about the scrolls and can't find one that names the birds. They were rare in the 12th century, however, and assuming that the Chinese word means something like the English word "rare", it would be interesting to find out if all these species still exist.

Robert

Well I can recognise some of them. The top row (from the left) shows a hoopoe , a Blue magpie , a hwamei and the second from the right on the bottom row is a laughing thrush of some species, but the others elude me. What do you think they are? Could any of them have been so rare in the 12th Century that they no longer exist today?

PARTIAL ALBINO BLACKBIRD

These photographs were taken in Northam, North Devon by Matt Osborne on his camera phone..

MUIRHEAD'S MYSTERIES: White starlings and a cure for vipers

Richard Muirhead is an old friend of the CFZ. I have been friends with him for 40 years now, since we were kids together in Hong Kong. He is undoubtedly one of the two best researchers I have ever met; he and Nigel Wright both have what Charlie Fort would have no doubt called a wild talent; a talent for going into a library, unearthing a stack of old newspapers, and coming back with some hitherto overlooked gem of arcane knowledge. Twice a week he wanders into the Macclesfield Public Library and comes out with enough material for a blog post..

Now that Easter is over I`m returning with Fortean zoology from the Macclesfield Courier.

Now we`re up to January 1814:

"RARA AVIS-On Tuesday se`enight a person of Boston (1) shot a white starling, which was one of a flock of birds of the ordinary colour,flying in the pastures round that town. Being only slightly wounded, it is yet alive. The gunner observed another white starling in the flock."

(1) Boston is, by the way, the town in Lincolnshire

Macclesfield Courier. January 22nd 1814.p.2

"Prof. Mangeli (?) has published in the Milan Journal, a long report upon the action of the venom of vipers. He states, as the result of his experience, the ammonite is the only sovereign remedy for the bite of those reptiles, and that opium and musk, which have been hitherto prescribed, have no certain effect".

ALBINO BIRDS FROM THE KENDAL MUSEUM

Yesterday Richard Muirhead asked a rhetorical question. "What HAPPENS to all these preserved Fortean specimens?!" he asked angrily.

Well they don't all disappear forever. Some regional museums, for example, still have remarkable collections of exhibits of fortean interest. However many of these collections are just not in tune with current tastes, so they are kept off show, like these gloriously bizarre albino birds from Kendal Museum...