Richard Muirhead (slight return): Reedwolves and swarming blues

Richard Muirhead is an old friend of the CFZ. I have been friends with him for 40 years now, since we were kids together in Hong Kong. He is undoubtedly one of the two best researchers I have ever met; he and Nigel Wright both have what Charlie Fort would have no doubt called a wild talent; a talent for going into a library, unearthing a stack of old newspapers, and coming back with some hitherto overlooked gem of arcane knowledge. Twice a week he wanders into the Macclesfield Public Library and comes out with enough material for a blog post.

However, as you may have guessed his natural habitat is the library. This past few weeks, for the first time since I have known him, he has been out in the field doing research. He has been working with a butterfly conservation organisation in Hungary, and whilst he was out there he has carried out a few cryptozoological tasks for us.

He telephoned the other day, excitedly telling me aboiut a swarm of blue butterflies he had seen; well over a thousand silver studded blues (Plebeius argus). Such swarms used to be common in Britain, (as you can see from the second extract this week from L Hugh Newman's seminal Living with Butterflies (1967) which is posted on the left.

However, to the best of my knowledge they have not been seen in Britain for many years, so Richard was unsurprisingly excited.

But it wasn't just butterflies that attracted his attention. About ten minutes ago he telephoned me from a train just outside Brussels - he is on his way home, and he said that he had some interesting news about the reedwolf, about which I first read in Karl Shuker's Extraordinary Animals Revisited. Karl wrote:

"The Hungarian reedwolf was a small, mysterious form of wild dog existing in Hungary and eastern Austria until the early 1900s. In 1856, M. Mojsisovics named it Canis lupus minor, treating it as a small wolf, but the precise nature of its identity remained a debated issue long after that. In the late 1950s, this extinct enigma inspired a series of interchanges in various journals between Hungarian researchers Drs Eugen Nagy and János Szunyoghy. Nagy staunchly supported Mojsisovics’s reedwolf classification, but Szunyoghy categorized it as a larger-than-normal version of the common jackal (in 1938, Dr Gyula Éhik had actually renamed it C. aureus hungaricus). However, the detailed studies of Prof. Eduard-Paul Tratz with the handful of museum specimens of reedwolf in existence provided persuasive evidence for believing that it had been an unusually diminutive race of wolf after all, an identity that has since won widespread acceptance."

It was difficult to make out what Richard was saying. There were train noises, crackling sounds, and he was on a mobile 'phone three countries away, and I am going deaf. But it appears that the controversy continues, over whether it was jackal or wolf, and also that the use of the past tense is not really justified. For, as far as I can gather, sightings continue to the present day.

More news when I get it (and BTW, Richard asked me to tell you all that Muirhead's Mysteries will be back next week)

Totally coincidentally, our new buddy Scotty Westfall over on the Wildlife Mysteries blog which gets better and better each day, has just published an article on the reedwolf which can be found at the link below:

http://wildlifemysteries.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/what-is-the-reed-wolf/

GUEST BLOGGER RICHARD MUIRHEAD: A couple of interesting stories

As regular readers willknow, Richard is one of my dearest friends, and furthermore someone I have known since 1970 when we were children together in Hong Kong. He is a natural polymath, and one of the best researchers I have ever met. Proof of this particular pudding comes in these two stories which he fished out of his local public library..

I found the following two stories in the Macclesfield Courier and Stockport Express or Cheshire General Advertiser.(MCSE or CGA)

1."Wild Man- A wildman was lately caught in the forests of Hungary,by
a Wallachian, who first perceived him seated upon a tree, eating
leaves. He appeared to be 24 years of age,and had his back and chest
entirely overspread with a thick covering of hair: his skin was a dark
yellow. He expressed only confused cries and a sort of murmer. He
became melancholy at the sight of a forest or a garden and sought to
hide himself in such places. After having been kept 2 or 3 years in
captivity,he began to eat dressed meat,and from that moment his manners
became less savage; and his body losing a considerable portion of its
hairy covering,became less yellow. He is now quite civilized,and
performs the office of water-carrier;but never advances so far as to be
able to speak words and sentences in succession. MCSE or CGA March 23rd
1811.

2. An eagle of an immense size,was shot lately at Heaton Norris near
Stockport by Mr Geo.Bromiley of Gorton,which measured from tip to tip
of the wings 7 feet ten inches,in length 3 feet 4 inches,and weighed
nearly 18 pounds. This mighty monarch of the air was fired at when in
the very act of attacking a young pig,and being only slightly wounded
in the shoulder and back part of the head great pains were taken to
seure him alive,but from the very stout resistance he made,it became
necessary to kill him to prevent his escaping. He is now in the museum
of Mr Priestnall, surgeon, in Stockport, and is supposed to be the
largest Bird of the kind ever shot in England. MCSE or CGA March 30th
1811