CRYPTOZOOLOGY ONLINE: Still on the Track: 06/24/13

Monday, June 24, 2013

A French Bigfoot? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Scottie Westfall: Aquatic canid vs. duck-billed dinosaurs

Jonathan McGowan (above, with sika deer pelvis fragment which he says bears teeth marks from a Big Cat) is a Big Cat consultant familiar to readers of this blog from his talks at CFZ's Weird Weekend, kindly hosted myself and two others from the London Cryptozoology Club (LCC) in early June on one of his regular Big Cat surveys with the Dorset Big Cats Group.

He is a naturalist and works at Bournemouth Science Society, and also does taxidermy. (McGowan said he was busy with taxidermy at the moment, most of it restoring hundred-year-old museum exhibits. The century-old sea eagle he was restoring for the Dorset County Museum had to be moved off one of the armchairs when the LCC rendezvoused at his Bournemouth home.) To his dismay, McGowan's most famous for his roadkill diet, which accounts for all the meat he eats, and has seen him interviewed on TV and radio shows in the US and Russia.

While the leopards reported in the UK used to be almost exclusively melanistic (black) leopards, now we're seeing "more spotted ones," says McGowan. The "leopard wool" (below, the under-layer of fur) we later picked off the barbed wire fences at Purbeck was from a spotted leopard.

Most people taking the chain ferry from Bournemouth over the estuary head straight for Shell Bay Beach (below, famous for its nudist colony) but few beach-goers are aware that there are "leopards on the beach at night."

Read on...

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out of place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.

MSU scientists discover cause of endangered bird s...

DALE DRINNON: Loch Ness Monster, Vietnamese Dragon Birds, Frontiers of Anthropology, Benny's Blogs

New at the Frontiers of Zoology:

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2013/06/more-loch-ness-monster-photos.html

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2013/06/vietnamese-dragon-birds.html

New at the Frontiers of Anthropology:

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/2013/06/introducing-prof-noah-zark-part-2.html

New at Benny's OTHER Blog, The Ominous Octopus Omnibus:

http://bennypdrinnon.blogspot.com/2013/06/dick-tracy-meets-smokey-stover.html

http://bennypdrinnon.blogspot.com/2013/06/dick-tracy-meets-miss-egghead-part-viii.html

Best Wishes, Dale D.

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN FREAKS OUT

And so another week begins. The weather is - once again - gorgeous. I even saw a silver washed fritillary flying through the garden the other day. This is by far the best summer we have had in years, even though it is still slightly cool. CFZ Volunteers Tim, Graidi and baby Dougal came over yesterday, and Dougal made friends with both the kittens and the dog, who was remarkably gentle. I think Prudence realised that he was just a puppy.

What's new on the Gonzo Daily?
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com

The Gonzo Track of the Day is from Karnataka
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/gonzo-track-of-day-karnataka-your-world.html

Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet. Apologies to Thom - I posted yesterday's entry twice
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_23.html

Prog rock star Rick Wakeman pays tribute to Welsh guitarist Gary Pickford-Hopkins
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/prog-rock-star-rick-wakeman-pays.html

A Hawkwind sprog speaks out
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-dad-was-in-hawkwind.html

Steve Hackett at Birmingham Symphony Hall
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/steve-hackett-at-birmingham-symphony.html

Chris Squire reveals why there have been so many lineup changes in Yes
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/they-just-get-fed-up-with-me-long-time.html

* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html

* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 53 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of whom is also orange) puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cat?