WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Thursday, June 27, 2013

DALE DRINNON: Sauropod, Sea wolf, Benny's Blogs, and a visit to the world of Cedar & Willow

NOTICE: Comments submitted to Blogger may or may not make it through to publication. There is a bug on.

THE GONZO BLOG DOO DAH MAN IS ASLEEP

Well, I finished reading 'The People's Music' by Stuart Maconie last night. When I posted about it yesterday, several people accused me of being unfair. But although some of the later chapters are better, the book is still a big disappointment. It is just so lightweight. It reads like a series of columns in a popular magazine. And the mistakes are unforgivable (Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull did not play the first Glastonbury. It was Ian A Anderson, an acoustic singer songwriter and a completely different dude). Other statements remain unsubstantiated. For example it is fairly well accepted that John Lennon went off in a huff after George Harrison refused to let Yoko appear at the Concert for Bangladesh. However, Maconie says that his non-appearance was because of his unwillingness to cut short a holiday. If this is true, it is actually quite a major thing for Lennon scholars. But where did he get it from?
I really wanted this book to be good. But it isn't. Maconie is a fine writer, and I suspect that an editor somewhere took a hatchet to his prose and dumbed it down outrageously. That, dear readers, is a sign of the times.
What's new on the Gonzo Daily?
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com
Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet.
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/06/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_27.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?

CFZ PEOPLE: Harriet Wadham



Happy Birthday, my dear

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.
#

Capture of alleged "kallana" pygmy elephant

An animal described as a "calf elephant, which is purportedly a 'pygmy'" was "tethered" (captured) in February by Kerala Forest Department (KFD) vets in the forest in Paruthypally, in the Trivandrum District of the South Indian state of Kerala. 

The capture was covered in The Hindu newspaper of Feb 7 this year and there's also a Malayalam language TV broadcast, which has a fleeting few seconds of a slightly strange-looking elephant moving in the forest, with not much to indicate the scale.

While the traditions of the local Kani "tribals" who live in the Peppara forest describe"kallana" - an agile pygmy elephant five feet in height or less, the Kerala wildlife officials were so convinced that the elephant was nothing of the sort that they "dismissed" a demand for DNA samples to be taken from the elephant. V. Gopinath, Chief Wildlife Warden, Kerala, was quoted as saying "kallana" said "kallana" was "a myth" that "existed in the folklore of tribespeople alone." Another KFD official described the elephant as being a six-year-old calf.


Read on...

KARL SHUKER - HISTORY AND MYSTERIES OF THE HUIA, A BIRD WITH TWO BEAKS


Karl Shuker charts the history and reveals the mysteries of the huia - New Zealand's lost but famous bird with two beaks.

GLEN VAUDREY'S WHOLE WIDE WORLD #28. Hiatus


28. Hiatus
Yes it does sound like a country that you have never heard of but really it’s a fancy word to explain why you haven’t seen any progress in the Whole Wide World series for over a year. It’s not because of a shortage of mystery animals around the world, no, I have been very busy.
Firstly, I have been busy writing the Mystery Animals of Staffordshire with Nick Redfern and you will be glad to know this book, the latest volume in the Mystery Animal series, will be on sale later this year.

Not only writing, I have also been busy launching vaudrey.art on eBay selling northern school, cubist and cryptozoology artwork so if you fancy owning an original mystery animal painting you now know where to look.

Later this week we shall be resuming our worldwide trip looking for mystery animals once again.

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today