Happy Birthday to our favourite sub-editor Lizzy C, who (apparently, because I have just spoken to her) has various birthday treats lined up for her today by her sister and her boyfriend.
* Each year we have speakers drop out at the last minute, and have to have people on the reserve benches ready to fill in. This year, the reserve benches hold three speakers: Yours truly on the events that happened in Ireland last year, Richard F on Japanese Monsters, and Oll Lewis on the Cardiff Giant and his kin. I know you will all be thinking that we can't possibly lose three speakers, but one year, due to a rail strike and a flu epidemic we lost 9...but it was still one of the best ever Weird Weekends, so watch this space..
With less than a week to go, now might be a good time to buy your tickets to the best crypto-fortean event of the year....
Buy Your Tickets here
This is either a silly waste of time, or a remarkably spot-on satire of the way most TV programmes treat mystery animal stories...
Although this skull was once said to belong to the mythical Aboriginal creature known as a bunyip, it was identified by the naturalist William Sharp Macleay (1792-1865) as nothing but a horse, deceptively presented to fool the credulous. It was part of a major collection that eventually formed the Macleay Museum, assembled by three members of the Macleay family. This has been housed in purpose-built accommodation on the University of Sydney campus since the 1880s.
Celebrated for its holdings in entomology, ethnography, scientific instruments and historic photographs, the museum can trace its origins back to 1826, when Alexander Macleay was appointed colonial secretary for New South Wales - and brought with him one of the largest privately owned insect collections in the world.
It was developed by Macleay's son William Sharp and nephew William John, whose passion for taxonomy included a particular interest in intestinal worms. The latter would scour the fish markets for novelties and purchase specimens from local naturalists and "bird stuffers".
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412864&c=1
Yesterday on the news blog Gavin posted a story about the apparent comeback being made by Britain's largest butterfly Papilio machaon the Swallowtail. The butterflies seen in East Anglia are of the British subspecies, P.m. britannicus, (left top) whereas the common European subspecies P.m.gorganus (left, below) is only known in the UK from rare vagrants blown over from Europe. At least that is the generally accepted state of affairs._edit.jpg)
says that the butterflies which were once found in Kent and around London within historical times, were actually P.m.gorganus, which is mildly interesting but also seds light on another British lepidopterical (if that is a word) mystery.