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...

Search This Blog

WATCH OUR WEEKLY WEBtv SHOW

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON
Click on this logo to find out more about helping CFZtv and getting some smashing rewards...

SIGN UP FOR OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER



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, August 15, 2013

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.

 Protected birds fed poisoned corn: court

KARL SHUKER: REVIVING THE BLACK INDRI


Karl Shuker resurrects the black indri - a very alliterative melanistic mystery mammal from Madagascar!

Read on...


SHERI THE CFZ INTERN: Day 6 – Tuesday


Today, I woke up, eventually got out of bed, and put on a flowery dress before setting about the day. It wasn’t a feeding day for animals, so I was not involved in the rounds. After the pile of cardboard boxes from yesterday was stamped down they were loadedinto the car and taken to the recycling plant.

I cleared up all the bits of rubbish, e.g. polystyrene, which had fallen from the boxes. Once this was done I then cleared away the tools, wood and rubbish from the path outside of the conservatory, where Graham had been making improvements. The bags of gravel were also returned to their rightful place.

Boxes of books had arrived so I made a list of their contents and passed it on to Corinna. In the evening there was some crypto-talk such as on the tatzel worm. This was followed by watching some footage of Attenborough from the ‘50s and a documentary from the ‘30s about travelling across the Sahara. Then the night degenerated. The less said about this the better. I eventually got into bed at half past five in the morning. 

Current Herpetology 32(1) 8/1/13

Table of Contents:
b2ap3_thumbnail_CurrentHerp32-1.jpg
Allingham, Shaun Michael and Martyn Harvey. 2013. Effects of different fire regimes on amphibian communities in the Nyika National Park, Malawi. Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 1-8. [ natrix36@hotmail.com]

Anonymous. 2013. Titles of papers presented in the 51st Annual Meeting of the Herpetological Society of Japan (10-11 November 2012 at Aichigakusen University, Toyota). Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 71-75.

Goldberg, Stephen R. 2013. Reproduction in the Many-lined Sun Skink, Eutropis multifasciata (Squamata: Scincidae) from Sarawak, Malaysia. Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 61-65. [ sgoldberg@whittier.edu]

Ito, Ryo, Isami Ikeuchi and Akira Mori. 2013. A day gecko darkens its body color in response to avian alarm calls. Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 26-33. [ ryo.j.h.ito@gmail.com]

Kurita, Takaki. 2013. Current status of the introduced Common House Gecko, Hemidactylus frenatus (Squamata: Gekkonidae), on Amamioshima Island of the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 50-60. [ mofumofu_monticola@hotmail.co.jp]

Nishikawa, Kanto, Masafumi Matsui and Tao Thien Nguyen. 2013. A new species of Tylototriton from northern Vietnam (Amphibia, Urodela, Salamandridae). Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 34-49. Tylototriton ziegleri sp. nov. [ hynobius@zoo.zool.kyoto-u.ac.jp]

Takeuchi, Hirohiko, Mizuki Takeuchi and Tsuotomu Hikida. 2013. Extremely low genetic diversity in the Japanese population of Zootoca vivipara (Squamata: Lacertidae) revealed by Mitochondrial DNA. Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 66-70. [ hirohiko@zoo.zool.kyoto-u.ac.jp]

Yoshikawa, Natsuhiko and Masafumi Matsui. 2013. A new salamander of the genus Onychodactylus from Tsukuba Mountains, Eastern Honshu, Japan (Amphibia, Caudata, Hynobiidae). Current Herpetology. 32 (1): 9-25. Onychodactylus tsukubaensis sp. nov. [ fumi@zoo.zool.kyoto-u.ac.jp]
 Courtesy of HerpDigest and ZenScientist

DALE DRINNON: New shark, Frontiers of Anthropology, Benny's Blogs

New at the Frontiers of Zoology:
 
New at the Frontiers of Anthropology:
 
New at Benny's Blog for Thelma Todd:
 
New at Benny's Other Blog, The Ominous Octopus Omnibus:
 
The article about "Gaggy", a one-shot Batman comics character who resembled "Stooge": Moe Howard, was reprinted on both of Benny's blogs.
 
Best Wishes, Dale D.

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN WAS UP LATE

And so it begins. The 2013 Weird Weekend starts this evening as various folk from far and wide descend upon my garden in search of margaritas. The next three days will be fraught and busy, but if it all goes well it will still be my favourite weekend of the year. I will still be reading my e-mails and answering telephone calls, but unless things are particularly urgent I would be very grateful if you don't contact me until early next week. My three juvenile helpers are being totally brilliant. The Weird Weekend has always relied on exploitative child labour, and I see no reason why this proud tradition should not continue.
Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet.
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_15.html
Today's Track of the Day is my favourite song by Fairport Convention
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-gonzo-track-of-day-fairport.html
‘I think he was playing hard to get’: Greg Lake on convincing Carl Palmer to join Emerson Lake and Palmer
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-think-he-was-playing-hard-to-get-greg.html
‘It’s got a unique flow to it’: Billy Sherwood completes work on new album by Star Trek’s William Shatner
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/its-got-unique-flow-to-it-billy.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?

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today