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...




Tuesday, September 08, 2009

THE DEPARTURE LOUNGE

When he was brought in during the late spring he was seriously underweight and couldn't fly. During a routine examination last week he turned out to be about 30% smaller than he should have been.

He was probably the runt of the litter and would never have had a chance in the wild so although we were sad, we were not overly surprised when Richard found him dead in his aviary yesterday morning.

Rest in Peace Ichabod Meldrew.

During his brief time with us he did exhibit some very fortean habits, as the link below shows.

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/05/twa-corbies.html

YOU'RE GONNA WRITE ME A LETTER, THE SOONER THE BETTER

My postbag continues to delight and amuse. So far this morning I have another blue dog picture from Naomi, a pile of research material from Richard Muirhead (who really is a marvel) covering Irish lake monsters and historical sightings of wildmen in Poland, and a parcel from blogdude Bigfoot73 (aka John Coates). He has very kindly sent me a 1tb RAM card, and the Command & Conquer game that I rather cheekily asked for (not thinking for a moment that anyone would send it to me).

Thank you, my dear.

The CFZ has been funded by private subscription, and donations for seventeen years now, but it is a two-way process. Next week, everything being OK, we will be donating a working (though slightly ancient) computer, to Tony "Doc" Shiels who is a working (though slightly ancient) wizard, and today the CFZ fighting fund paid for a new USB keyboard for Dizzy Miss Lizzy, who managed to knacker hers by pouring coke all over it.

Before anyone repeats Max's idiotic slur, it was the sort of coke that comes in a bottle and is rather good mixed with rum, rather than the other sort, although the idea of Ms C. doing a line of Bolivian Marching Powder off her laptop is admittedly amusing.

So if you have any computer equipment up for grabs let me know. I will find it a good home, and who else would mix Ecclesiastes 11:1 with a string of poor drug jokes?

SMASHING NEW BOOK ON ATLANTIS

COMPANION TO ATLANTIS AND OTHER MYSTERY LANDS,

by Ronan Coghlan

XIPHOS BOOKS 2009, ISBN 978-0-9544936-9-1

There have been more books on Atlantis than you can shake a stick at. So what’s different about this one? Well, aside from being written by noted scholar, Fortean and antiquarian Ronan Coghlan; it is an A to Z of not just all things Atlantean but of all lost geography: lost cities, lost islands, lost continents. It’s all here: Hyperborea, lemuria, Mu, Shambhala and many others. Some of the most interesting are not the huge continents but small islands or island chains that seem to have vanished. The Aurora Islands in the South Atlantic, for example, were last observed in 1856; the Nimrod Islands near the tip of South America were last seen in 1828; and Pepys Island, which vanished in 1684. Pheng-Lai was supposedly a mysterious island of Chinese legend visited over 2000 years ago that may have been Hawaii.

As for Atlantis itself people have thought that it was just about anywhere from Ireland to Africa. Some say it was a city on an island in a lake rather than a continent in the ocean. One such spot is the wonderfully named Poopoo Lake in Bolivia.

People who have written about, hunted for or studied Atlantis and other lost locations are listed from Madam Blavatsky to Otto Muck. There are also lists of the animals and plants that supposedly flourished on Atlantis.

Ronan supports a very feasible idea that most of the lost continents can be traced back to the scientifically well attested sinking of ancient Sundaland (no, not the place were Geordie Dave lives; the land mass that once linked the Indonesian Islands together. It was quite swiftly broken into island chains in three successive inundations 14 000, 11 000 and 8 500 years ago. DNA evidence shows that the inhabitants spread out widely, ranging from Turkey to the Eastern Pacific. They may have even been the ancestors of the Sumerians. Linguistic evidence also points to the idea that the Sundaland people were ancestral to the Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic peoples. All in all it sounds like a plausible root to the worldwide legends of ‘lost continents’. RF

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Companion-Atlantis-Other-Mystery-Lands/dp/0954493699/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252400844&sr=1-1

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday’s News Today


http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

I was contacted today by a very upset young lady who had been searching high and low for 3D glasses to look at Sunday’s 3D photo only to find out it wasn’t there. I didn’t notice this because it had been bumped off the front page by the exciting news about the blue dogs, so I’m sorry I didn’t upload it somewhere and post a link to it in yesterday’s YNT. To make up for it, here it is:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v386/shearluck/trilo.jpg

It takes a long time and a lot of skill to make these 3D photos (you can’t just point a 3D cam at something and snap it; you have to do a lot of calibration to get the desired effects) and I’m getting better at them all the time; this work is among my best yet. If you want to see the whole lot of 3D photos so far, and ones that haven’t been on the bloggo, there is an album on my facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=601569127#/album.php?aid=123546&id=601569127

Anyway, now it’s time for the news:

Arctic researcher flees after wolves gorge on bacon

Australian man finds python living in his toilet

More albino hedgehogs

Mt Bosavi team find giant rats and grunting fish

‘Rat’s amazing!