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.





ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

From Nick Redfern's World of Whatever:

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH RECOVERS

I am still recovering from the shock and trauma of last weekend. In fact the Weird Weekend itself was remarkably hassle-free. All the speakers were excellent (special commendation must go to Judge Smith who came out of left field and was the undoubted star of the weekend), and  everyone turned up when and how they were supposed to. Nothing got broken, the damage was minimal and everyone had a good time. But there was an awful lot of drama amongst the younger members of the community. Hearts were being broken left, right and centre and it was more like an episode of Hollyoaks than a cryptozoological convention.
You probably won't believe where I went last night. My dear niece Jessica the Elder (which sounds like she is some medieval despot from somewhere in the Holy Roman Empire) has recently become a representative for the Jamie Oliver cookware range, and she had her first sales party last night. Jessica the Younger (who sounds like an early Christian martyr) went along to buy ice-cream-sundae glasses, and Ronan Coghlan and I went along to heckle and make facetious comments. I think I showed great restraint when faced with a cooking utensil named "Jamie's big chopper", and ended up spending over thirty quid.
Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet.
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_20.html
Ex-Yes Singer Jon Anderson Taking Part in New Progressive Rock Cruise
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/ex-yes-singer-jon-anderson-taking-part.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?

MUIRHEAD'S MYSTERIES: A Chinese apocathery's shop from 1946



These photographs of the animals in an apothecary`s shop in China probably in the 1930s were on a much longer Chinese-language blog I translated into English.

Although there is nothing cryptid about them, they are interesting and show Draco-volans-type lizards,which I thought were confined to Malaysia/Sumatra. The link is below.

http://tieba.baidu.com/p/1499440056

Flying Snake 5 is now available at £3.99 on pdf and the hard copy will be available about August 12th. See the magazine`s Facebook page