DALE DRINNON: Lindorm as eel

As a matter of interest I post this panel from the comic book The Brave and the Bold, shortly before the announcement of the silver-age Justice League of America. It depicts a lindorm as a gigantic eel. Joe Kubert was the artist and I do not know where the idea for the eel comes from, but it does match some of the traditional descriptions of the lindorm (sometimes including the pectoral fins).

THANK YOU TO OLL, GAVIN AND CORINNA

Every day that I am here, and well enough, I post seven items or more to the bloggo. In my absence Lizzy and/or Graham do a magnificent job filling in for me. But while every time they do this I thank them on the blog, I seldom thank the people who work on it every day. This is terribly remiss of me.

So, many thanks to Oll Lewis who writes `Yesterday's News Today` day in and day out, Gavin Lloyd Wilson who oversees the newsblog, and my darling wife Corinna who during Gavin's leave-of-absence is doing the newsblog daily, and at other times bustles around wherever she is needed, as well as writing her own blogs. Thank you, my dears!

THE AMATEUR NATURALIST #9 IS AVAILABLE

After a long wait, the hard-copy version of The Amateur Naturalist #9, ably edited by Max Blake, is available.



The Digital Edition has been available for some time.



It is a rich and varied edition, and the contents are:




3 Editorial
5 Who’s who
7 Contents
9 News:
RSPCA make Jumbo Fools of Themselves
11 News
25 Club news
27 Keeping locusts as pets by Corinna Downes
30 Locusts in the UK by Richard Muirhead
32 A Jekyll and Hyde of Characins
by David Marshall
39 Hawkmoths and Tigers and the
Butterfly Effect by Jonathan Downes
44 Suriname Toads by Richard Freeman
47 Toxic caterpillars by Nick Wadham
50 Turning over a new leaf by Max Blake
52 An attitude out of the Ark
by Richard Freeman
54 Revolting plants as a substitute for
exotic pets by Mark Pajak
59 CFZ meet the Titan Arum
60 The sail-finned water dragon
by Richard Freeman
63 Birth, Sex and Death in rural England
by Carl Portman
67 Release the bats by Oll Lewis
71 The scales have fallen ….. or something!
A field report from Denmark by Lars
Thomas
73 Tell me Y
by Jonathan Downes
76 Exclusive extract from
The Mystery Animals of Ireland
by Ronan Coghlan and GaryCunningham
83 Olive millipedes
by Lucy Henson
85 Mysteries of the dog
by Scottie Westfall
90 CFZ Press News
91 Lucy’s life
92 Corinna’s Endangered Species column:
The Philippine eagle
94 Bookshelf
98 Aquarium review: Blue Reef, Bristol
101 About the CFZ
105 About CFZ Press

RICHARD FREEMAN: Daemons of the Dreamtime Part 7

THE BUNYIP
'Bunyip' may be a corruption of an Aboriginal word. The term first appears in print in 1920 in the Sydney Gazette where the ‘bahnyip’ was described as ‘a large black animal like a seal, with a terrible voice which creates terror among the blacks’.

There are two types of Bunyip. One resembles a big seal; the other has a long neck and small head. Both are furry and considered dangerous. Bunyips supposedly emerged at night to hunt prey including humans.

There were a number of sightings by white settlers up till the 1930s. These may have been based on leopard seals or sea lions that had strayed many miles in land by swimming up rivers. Inland tribes would have been totally unfamiliar with these marine mammals that can be quite large and aggressive. The weird vocalisation attributed to the Bunyip may have been made by the Australian bittern Botaurus poiciloptilus.

D. R. SHOOP WRITES

If you love Bogs and Birds you’ll enjoy this.

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/novdec10/sax_zim.html

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1499 Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the British throne who claimed to be the son of King Edward IV, was executed after several failed attempts to escape from the Tower of London. Warbeck claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury, the youngest of the princes in the tower who, unbeknownst to Warbeck, had been murdered by King Richard III and his body hidden in an old chest a few yards away from where Warbeck was jailed. Richard of Shrewsbury was played by Brian Blessed in the first series of Blackadder.
And now, the news:

Flamingos gathered in the shape of a flamingo is '...
Rosser's sac photographed
Smoked duck
New species of large squid found
First cold water coral ecosystem discovered off co...
Species ID challenged by DNA analysis
How hummingbirds fight the wind

Hummingbirds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujN4osRD22E