BIRD ATTACKS IN FALMOUTH BAY - We've been here before

At the beginning of the year, the good doctor telephoned me, and said that this was going to be a rather special year for those of us who have been watching the quasi-fortean events in southern Cornwall over the past third of a century.

And in a low key sort of way, it has been. Earlier in the year there were a spate of sightings of a strange bipedal mammal in the woods between Mawnan Old Church and Maenporth Beach, and so I was not particularly surprised when I received several notifications of a series of raptor attacks in the Helford passage. As anyone who has ever made a study of such things will know, we have been here before.

Watch this space, because the game is most definitely afoot....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/8158022.stm

WHO LET THE (PRAIRIE) DOGS OUT?

Kithra sent us an interesting story yesterday. She knows that Gavin L-W is on leave of absence while he writes a book about guitars (we'd better get a copy Mr Wilson, or we will sulk mightily), so she is sending newsblog submissions to us. I am glad she did, because it has opened up a whole can of worms. Because this is the third Cornish record of prairie dogs that we have received in the last two years, and the second UK report this year.

The news report, which can be read in its original glory HERE reads:

A couple from Cornwall have photographed a prairie dog while they were on a moor in Cornwall.
Linda and Godfrey Stevens were on the Goss Moor trail when they spotted a small furry creature that they could not recognise.

Godfrey Stevens said: "We didn't expect to see anything like that." Newquay Zoo confirmed the picture was that of a prairie dog. They are mammals from the squirrel family and are from the grasslands of North America. Mr Stevens said: "We expected to see wild flowers. It was a real surprise for us." John Meeks from Newquay Zoo said it was a black-tailed prairie dog "without a doubt".

Well, yes. It is indeed a black tailed prairie dog without a doubt. Unlike previous incumbents, the current management of Newquay Zoo are not inclined to making idiotic quasi-cryptozoological statements in the press. But the important thing is how did it get there? Prairie dogs are North American ground squirrels that live in large social groups on the grasslands of North America. And it is the 'large social groups' that is the important feature here.

Black tailed prairie dogs are highly inappropriate pets for this reason, but also for a logistical one; they are great burrowers and will dig long tunnels. Therefore, unless one is very careful, the chances of escapes are very high indeed. There is also a third reason why they are not widely kept as pets. Look at this pricelist, pinched today, from the website of a highly regarded specialist animal dealer:

Arabian Spiny Mouse Acomys cahirinus dimidiatus £ 10.00
Egyptian Spiny Mouse Acomys cahirinus cahirinus £ 10.00
Harvest Mouse Micromys minutus £ 25.00
Striped Grass Mouse Lemniscomys barbarus £ 10.00
Multimammate Mouse Mastomys natalensis £ 5.00
African Pygmy Mouse Mus minutoides £ 15.00
African Dwarf Dormouse Graphiurus murinus £ 25.00
Duprasi (fat tailed gerbil) Pachyuromys duprasi £ 15.00
Pallid Gerbil Gerbillus perpallidus £ 10.00
Shaws Jird Meriones shawi £ 15.00
Bushy Tailed Jird Sekeetamys £ 25.00
Acacia Rats Thallomys paedulucus £ 10.00
Nile Rats Arvicanthis niloticus £ 10.00
Hand Reared Gambian Pouched Rats Cricetomys gambianus - Males £ 250.00
Cricetomys gambianus - Females £ 300.00
Richardson Ground Squirrel Spermophilus richardsonii £ 100.00
13 Lined Ground Squirrel Spermophilus tridecemlineatus £ 100.00
Black Tailed Prarie Dog Cynomys ludovicianus £ 100.00
African Pygmy Hedgehogs Atelerix albiventris £ 150.00 from
Long Eared Hedgehogs Hemiechinus auritus auritus £ 150.00 from
Sugar Gliders Petaurus breviceps £ 150.00
Steppe Lemmings Lagurus largurus £ 20.00
Mediterranean Lemmings Microtus guentheri £ 15.00
Lesser Jerboa Jaculus jaculus £ 75.00
Greater Jerboa Jaculus orientalis £ 100.00

All the ground squirrels, including prairie dogs, are expensive at a hundred quid a pop, and the fact we have now received three reports from the same geographical area between Feb 2008 and this morning, would suggest that either there is someone in the area with more money than sense who keeps on buying these charming little rodents only to let them escape, or there is a well-established colony of these rather charming little fellows in captivity somewhere in mid-Cornwall, and that the escape record of this afore-mentioned colony is somewhat akin to Hogan's Heroes.

I think that an intensive search of the area with small mammal traps is probably in order, and that that those in charge of the British list should really come to terms with the fact that we have a new invasive species on our hands.

Hurrah!

PALM CIVET ON BODMIN MOOR

Darren Naish wrote: "Hey Jon, is this for real?" Well, buddy, it would certainly appear so. As I wrote back: It is the first that I have heard about it, but it is certainly a palm civet. There were a few at an animal dealer in Hertfordshire last year - and it would not surprise me THAT much if they got into culture, and subsequently got loose. I would not have thought that they would have survived the last winter though - it was a little harsh by recent British standards....

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: The Owlman and Others

Oll Lewis has done a very good job (and is continuing to do a very good job) digitising the CFZ Archives. Eventually they will ALL be available on line, and they will be indexed and sorted. Even the 30,000+ pictures in the CFZ picture library will be available for free as low res thumbnails, and for money as high res downloads. But this takes time and effort, but we get there slowly.

In the meantime here is a collection of newspaper stories from the CFZ Archive of Owlman-Related material. There is tons and tons more, but these (which include the hysterically funny "Weirdest Family in the Land" story frtom The Sun in April 1978) will do for starters..


http://www.cfz.org.uk/Archiving/Owlman/Newspaper/

THE LAST CORNISH RED SQUIRREL

This is another specimen from Truro Museum, and is the only bona fide Cornish specimen of the red squirrel that I have been able to find. In 1966, S.C. Madge wrote that the species was almost extinct in South-eastern Cornwall, although ‘there still might have been a few at Mount Edgecombe’.

Two years later, Dr. D.W. Turk wrote that:

“Although local the species is still widespread in the county and may indeed be spreading into new areas”.

In 1979, Manning noted that:

“It seems likely that the Red Squirrel has vanished from this part of England”.

although he expressed a faint hope that some might still survive in the far western tip of Cornwall. There are a few other Cornish records in the archives of the Institute for Cornish Studies, but after the mid-1970s even these peter out.

Officially, the status of the species is even less certain. Harry Pepper from the Forestry Commission Research Centre, says that the most recent Westcountry sightings that he is prepared to substantiate are from the edges of Bodmin Moor in 1965. (We believe that this roadkilled specimen was that animal). His most recent records from Devonshire are a decade earlier than that!

THE LAST CORNISH PINE MARTEN

Another image from the CFZ photo archives that may be of interest - a rather motheaten stuffed pine marten from the store rooms of Truro Museum. It is the only bona fide wild pine marten specimen from the county which still survives... as far as we know.


According to Langley and Yalden, the Pine Marten was extinct in the country by 1879, although we have records going on into the 1930s. This poor beastie was shot near Truro in the last few years of the 19th Century, and as far as we can ascertain, there are no other bona fide Cornish specimens around.


The only bona fide Devon specimen is in Combe Martin museum and is pictured in my book The Smaller Mystery Carnivores of the Westcountry.


All the other pine martens in Westcountry museums were donated by the late H.G.Hurrell or his family. Hurrell was a brilliant naturalist who was ever so slightly obsessed with pine martens, and his children and grandchildren are a major dynastical force in Devonshire natural history to this day.


For those of you interested, my book about martens and polecats in the westcountry is available at the link below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smaller-Mystery-Carnivores-Westcountry/dp/1905723059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239924307&sr=1-1

More on the Swanpool Beast

Our friend Kithra has given an update to the story of the Swanpool mystery creature on her blog:

http://kithraskrystalkave.blogspot.com/2009/02/falmouths-weird-creature-update.html

She also writes:

I found this longer article about the weird creature spotted in Falmouth, in the local weekly edition of The West Briton, so thought I'd forward it; although it doesn't really say much more than was reported in The Packet newspaper:

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/falmouth/Experts-puzzled-sighting-Swanpool-beast/article-708934-detail/article.html

Eat yer heart out Edward Lear

Those of you who have read my book, The Owlman and Others which is set in the woods around Mawnan Old Church in southern Cornwall, will know that there is an ongoing sub-text about Edward Lear. Lear (1812-1888) was a painter, poet, artist, writer and composer of nonsense poetry and limericks. His work is also the subtext of Seven Sunflower Seeds by one of my favourite authors, the late Sir John Verney an author who's glorious prose should be read by every fortean.

I quoted both Verney and Lear in The Owlman and Others and so I suppose that I should not be overly surprised at the latest developments surrounding the new Beast of Falmouth Bay It was seen in a set of woodlands which join on to the woodlands where the subject of my most well known book is said to roost.

These woodlands are already the home of a twisted, scarified owl, and now seem to be the haunt of a sililarly twisted and scarified pussycat. We confidently expect a visit from the pigs, and a pea green boat. Watch this space....

http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/pussy.html

YET ANOTHER MYSTERY CREATURE FROM FALMOUTH BAY

A very peculiar news story has just been published by the Falmouth Packet Newspaper.

"It was between 4pm and 5pm when Sam Bradbury left work and decided to go for a walk along the coastal path. Halfway around she spotted something moving in the bushes, but was unprepared for what she says she saw. She said: “I assumed it was a bird or maybe a dog being walked that was rustling the bushes. I stopped as I got nearer, when I realised it was neither.

It was a little bigger than a dog and had the face of a cat with eyes that were glazed over and luminescent like a lion’s at night. It left when it saw me but appeared to only walk on two hind legs much like a kangaroo would and had behind it a bushy tail like a fox.”

This story is very peculiar, not only because I have absolutely no idea what this creature could be, but because the aforesaid footpath is right in the middle of Owlman country. There have been no owlman sightings reported to us since 2002, but as we know from our own experience opver many years it is a particularly strange bit of woodland.

Richard Freeman, our Zoological Director suggests that it looks like a springhaire or springhaas, a south African rodent that looks superficially like a small kangaroo. They are kept in several British zoos, and as they are not in the slightest bit endangered, and not covered by the Dangerous Wild Animals Act it would not surprise us at all if they were kept locally by a private collector.

We know someone in the Falmouth area has a taste for exotic rodents because, a few years ago, we had a report of a jerboa turning up at Falmouth Art College.

Richard Freeman is contactingThe Falmouth Packet as we speak, and will be getting in touch with the original witness. Ain't Fortean Zoology grand!