On The Track (of Unknown Animals) Ep. 103 (Iran mystery, Loch Ness in Canada, Bigfoot, Yeti etc)

Here we have the twenty-second episode of the relaunched webTV show by the Centre for Fortean Zoology, written and presented by Jon Downes and Charlotte Phillipson (who is away doing her exams), their families and other animals. This episode contains: • The girls are unsettled • Ballet of root vegetables • Charlotte and her GCSEs • Patreon and Jon's Dad • Iranian mystery animal • Loch Ness in Canada? • Cultural appropriation • Blue Dogs • Yeti footprints • Graham takes Jon to task • Loch ness monster sightings • PRODUCT PLACEMENT - Richard Muirhead's new book • Watcher of the skies...with comedy results • New and rediscovered: - New and rediscovered: New vine snake - New and rediscovered: New snakehead - New and rediscovered: New groundsnake - New and rediscovered: New pit viper - New and rediscovered: Novataxal • Fair use • Coming next month • Jon and Archie twat about on social media • The team says goodbye until next month _________________________________ Some useful contacts: CFZ Website www.cfz.org.uk CFZ Patreon https://www.patreon.com/CFZ CFZ Blog Network https://forteanzoology.blogspot.co.uk/ CFZ Publications http://cfzresources.com/publishing/ CFZtv https://www.youtube.com/user/cfztv CFZ Next Generation Initiative https://www.facebook.com/groups/29796...

CFZ PEOPLE: Me and the Mrs (Seven years ago today)

JON'S NEW ALBUM

1.

• Bipolar
• View In iTunes

2.

• Lost Weekend
• View In iTunes

3.

• Hard Sports - EP
• View In iTunes

4.

• The Man from Dystopia
• View In iTunes

For those of you interested in my non cryptozoological activities, I have a new record out, and it is available via iTunes (other outlets will follow in the next few weeks). There will eventually be a limited edition, numbered and signed, hard copy as well.

	Name	Artist	Time	Price
1	The Cutty Wren	Jon Downes	4:43	$0.99	View In iTunes
2	Conversation Piece	Jon Downes	3:15	$0.99	View In iTunes
3	The Bells of Madness	Jon Downes	4:37	$0.99	View In iTunes
4	Back In the Eighties	Jon Downes	4:55	$0.99	View In iTunes
5	Deus Ex Machina	Jon Downes	2:40	$0.99	View In iTunes
6	The Compliance Commission	Jon Downes	2:44	$0.99	View In iTunes
7	The Long Goodbye	Jon Downes	6:33	$0.99	View In iTunes
8	Tony, You Really Are a Complete Bastard	Jon Downes	3:05	$0.99	View In iTunes
9	The Sane Are Mad	Jon Downes	3:48	$0.99	View In iTunes
10	The Day We Buried Jane	Jon Downes	10:06	Album Only	View In iTunes

WEIRD WEEKEND 2013: Jon Downes Keynote Speech

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1959, if memory serves me right, Jonathan Downes was born. Downes is a cryptozoologist of some repute and you may well have heard of him. Also on this day but in 565 Saint Columba claimed to have seen a monster in either Loch Ness or the River Ness, which is widely claimed to have been the first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

First sighting of Nessie and Downes on the same day? As Tony Shiels, one-time Wizard of the Western World, would say “There's no such thing as a coincidence...” (or maybe I just got the date of Jon's birthday wrong, which could happen, I guess).

And now the news:

New wildlife corridor created from Amboseli to Kil...

Caterpillar Can Hop for 3 Days in Leafy 'Sleeping ...

New Glue-Spitting Velvet Worm Found in Vietnam

Scots red deer 'breeding earlier due to climate ch...

Aquatic Life Migrating to Poles as Temperatures Sh...

Florida Panther sightings survey

New survey reveals more than 700 seals in the Tham...

Pennsylvania restaurant owner seeking home for 8-f...

A short clip that you might not have seen from long ago when Potters Museum of Curiosities was still open, with Jon talking about deformed creatures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QekM_fVzWco

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY

Thank you for marrying me, my dear.

A PARISH NOTICE

Just a quicky. Corinna and I will be away from Thursday to Monday (approximately). Graham will be running the Gonzo Daily, and the CFZ Blog Network in our abscence. He is usually ably assisted by Lizzy Clancy, but as we are away for her wedding and she has done me the honour of asking me to give her away, I think she will have other things on her mind this weekend....

If anyone wants to get hold of me by e-mail between thursday and monday/tuesday next week, please cc the email to graham@cfz.org.uk. He will pass the information on to me....

TODAY ON THE GONZO BLOG

Good Morning, campers. Another jolly day of Gonzitude lies before us with some particularly groovy things on today's blog....

First up we have a Judge Smith interview on Dutch radio, which comes to you courtesy of André Steijns and all at Paperlate:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/judge-smith-interview-on-dutch-radio.html

There is news of the forthcoming album by ex-Genesis guitarist Anthony Phillips:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/i-was-on-anthony-phillips-website-just.html

We have a real world exclusive (or at least I'm pretty sure we do). Here is the cover art for Michael Des Barres' new album:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/world-exclusive-michael-des-barres-new.html

Wally have fans in The Antipodes, or so it seems:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/wally-down-under.html

David Bowie once asked Rick Wakeman to tinkle the ivories in 'The Spiders from Mars', but our Rick turned him down. This and more is discussed in a look at a smashing new biography of Mr Bowie. An ex-girlfriend of mine once had an elderly albino anseriform as a pet. I nicknamed it 'The Thin White Duck', and no-one ever laughed at my pun.
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/david-bowie-rick-wakeman-and-me.html

And 'Butterfly' by Mimi Page and Bassnectar is storming up the iTunes charts:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/04/mimi-races-up-charts.html

See you tomorrow (unless my office gets struck by a meteorite first).

JON AND CORINNA IN THE BIDEFORD POST

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT - With Snakeheads!

We received this email this morning from those jolly nice people at Wildwoods. And there are species here I have never seen before...

FISH HOUSE NEWS - It’s Snakehead Time!

Our latest Indian shipment is now out of quarantine and we can now offer many rare and sought after species and colour variants of snakehead. Add these to our other Asian and African species and you will find the greatest collection of snakehead species ever offered for sale in the UK (if not Europe!)Only found from India, we have for only the 2nd time ever, Channa diplogramma
This rarely traded snakehead is very similar in appearance to the giant or red snakehead and will also grow to a large size. We currently have a group of five living happily together.

A full listing of all Wildwoods snakeheads can be found in our TF2YD webshop
After a three year wait, we have managed to import a small quantity of L260 Queen Arabesque plecs - looking fantastic at the moment! Also from Brazil we have a fabulous group of Geophagus altifrons and some stunning large Sunshine plecs - L14 Scobinancistrus aureatus

Also worth a mention is a cracking Merodontotus tigrinus of around 25cm - hand feeding too!

Looking Especially Good This Week
Corydoras robinae
Melanochromis lepidiadaptes
Hyphessobrycon simulans
Pseudomugil furcatus
Hypsibarbus wetmori
Tetraodon suvatti
Girardinus metallicus
Danio meghalayensis
Megalamphodus megalopterus
Geophagus steindachneri
Pelvicachromis rubrolabiatus
Pygopristis denticulatus

And why did Jon choose that headline?

JON'S JOURNAL: Porriwiggles and pugmarks

This has been a remarkably busy week with all sorts of things happening, both good and bad: Dave B-P has been in hospital, a close friend is getting divorced, I have had various CFZ-related traumas and on top of this, my consultant has changed my medication and I am now floating around on a slightly spacy cloud, which is fun if a little disconcerting.

So I am a little behind on my nature diary.

Back on Sunday after we had all number of mild adventures on Northam Burrows (see HERE, and HERE and HERE) we went back to Huddisford to take Prudence for a walk. One cannot really let her out on the Burrows on a Sunday because there are too many other dogs - many not on leads - and she is a little unpredictable where her fellow canids are concerned.

There we noted that 'our' tadpoles had hatched and were developing nicely.


Actually, that is not quite true. We noted that they had hatched about ten days before, as you can see in this brace of pictures, which not only show the newly hatched porriwiggles, but also show a middle-aged Hawkwind fan filming them for next month's OTT:



The trackways, which provide entrance and egress to the woodland, were well used, especially this one, which shows deer tracks as well as the tracks of a sizeable carnivore. We were quite excited at first, but Richard F. says that they are a dog.

JON'S JOURNAL: We shall pick up an existence by its frogs

As regular readers of my rambling will know, I have been following the progress of the poor unfortunate froggies of two areas just outside the village - Kennerland and Huddisford. Lots of them jollily tripped out to procreate at the end of January, and all the resultant spawn was killed in the bitterly cold snap a few weeks ago and is now rotting away.

The resultant yucky mess (to use the official scientific terminology) is now rotting away and in some cases appears to acually be fouling the water of the little ponds and ditches where it was deposited by Mr and Mrs Frog the other week.

Now Mr and Mrs Frog seem to have got in the romantic mood again (or at least one couple have - perhaps because it was Valentine's Day last week), because there is one lone batch of frogspawn in the Huddisford ditch. Ironically (if this is the word) it has been laid next to a piece of decaying dead spawn.

It seems to be developing normally, which is good news. However, could the decline in the frog population be due to the fact that so many of them pursue their biological urges too early in the year for the spawn to hatch?

Isn't it a pity that it seems to be illegal now to collect spawn from the wild; because it might be a boost to the population as a whole if someone collected some of the January spawn (which is doomed anyway), raised it in captivity and released the resulting tadpoles when the cold weather is over?

What a pity there aren't any anarchist zoologists about who have a healthy disregard for the law and want to do something good for the environment. Hmmmm

Oh, BTW I was wondering the other day: if I was to post a picture of a pair of Rana temporaria whilst in amplexus would that count as "Frog's porn"?

JON'S JOURNAL: Identify these waders

Corinna, Prudence and I went to Northam Burrows again yesterday, and we saw three species of bird for the first time this year.

One was a lapwing (V. vanellus), which have always been favourite birds of mine.

The other two were waders, and before you watch this short film that I put together this evening, please note that I am not claiming that these are spectacularly rare or of any cryptozoological importance whatsoever, but merely that I would like some help in identifying them. I am terribly rusty on my British birds, and although when I was a boy (and my grandmother, who was a keen bird watcher was alive) I knew them all, I am far less certain on my identifications nowadays.

BIG CAT NEWS: Today's stories

The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper column inches than any other cryptozoological subject.

There are so many of them now that we feel that we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in.

It takes a long time to do, so I am not promising that they will be done each day, but I will do them as regularly as I can. JD

Forget Gloucestershire big cats - 'lion' spotted near M5
This is Gloucestershire

CONCERNED callers alerted county police to more than 60 suspected big cat sightings in seven years – including a lion next to the M5 motorway. Gloucestershire Constabulary figures show they received 61 calls about what people believed were big cats in ...
Read on...

The big story today seems to be that of a Bristol barber who took a photograph that may have been of a big cat. The picture, however, as you can see, shows a very blurred print that may be from a felid but can't really be seen as conclusive evidence. At the risk of appearing cynical it looks as if the newspapers are jumping on the big cat bandwagon in an attempt to follow on from the big story in The Sun earlier this week.

Is this evidence of a big cat stalking Mendip Hills near Bristol?
This is Bristol
A BRISTOL barber believes he may have captured the paw print of a big cat stalking hills south of Bristol. Luigi Armato, 32, a barber in the city centre, snapped the print on his phone near the village of Binegar in the Mendip hills while out on a...
Read on...

The same story has appeared in two of the national daily papers (see below)

THE large print of a clawed paw is preserved in mud — the latest evidence of ...
The Sun
Now it's the Beast of Bristol: Giant paw print spotted in hills surrounding city
Daily Mail

We include the above links for the sake of completeness

In the very north of the UK, a series of sheep kills has prompted the locals to believe that a mystery cat not seen for some years has returned:

Has 'Skerray Beast' struck here again?
Sutherland Northern Times
And now, the people of Farr are wondering if the large puma-like cat has returned. The beast's modus operandi, marking it off from local scavengers or predators, was its ability to skin its prey every bit as neatly as any human being could.

Read on...



And also in Scotland...

Expert on prowl to solve 'big cat' mystery
Ross-Shire Journal
By Hector MacKenzie
This image shot by Lisa Sydenham of Tain, sparked a flurry of interest amongst big cat enthusiasts. THE mystery of a panther-like big cat spotted by a series of credible Ross-shire witnesses has been revisited by an acknowledged...
Read on...

I am not sure what to make of this picture. There doesn't seem to be any frame of reference so that one can tell the size, but the creature does seem very muscled. Perhaps a domestic moggy that has been eating steroids? I am basically joking here but would be interested to see what other people think of this picture.



And finally, Hinckley in Leicestershire was shocked recently by the discovery of the head of a muntjac in a tree. Was it the work of a big cat?

Mystery of the severed head on Burbage Common is solved
Hinckley Times
DOG walkers and others wanting to enjoy the picturesquely frosty scenes on Burbage Common can now do so without fear of a big cat attack. The mystery surrounding how a muntjac deer's head ended up in a tree has been solved - by the person who put it...

Nope: it was a bloke out walking his dog. His dog found it, and the owner took it away from the dog and put it in the tree to keep it away from the dog. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of stories are as simple as this if you dig hard enough.

JON'S PORTRAIT BY THOM ATKINSON

You may remember that last summer portrait photographer Thom Atkinson visited the CFZ and photographed Jon for an art project (don't giggle - it wasn't THAT kind of art project). Here - for the first time - are three pictures from the session..