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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Saturday, December 28, 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.






TODAY'S BIG CAT ROUND UP



The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 

There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. 

The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic level it is about the relationship between our species and various species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans, we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking. 

  • UK SIGHTING - Will DNA tests solve the mystery of ...
  • NEW ZEALAND SIGHTING - 'Panther' sighting near Fai...
  • AUSTRALIA SIGHTINGS: Baillieu govt sinks claws int...
  • UK SIGHTINGS: Hunt for mystery cat after new sight...
  • AUSTRALIA SIGHTINGS: BIG CATS IN AUSTRALIA
  • NEWSLINK: DENTAL WORK ON ZOO LIONESS

  • NEWSLINK: Mystery Cats - New Cat Species Realized ...
  • CRYPTOLINK: Bigfoot: Exploring the Myth & Discovering the Truth

    A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

    "Bigfoot are naturally going to be seen in remote places," state Bigfoot experts Burnette and Riggs (In the Big Thicket) to open this examination and potential explanation for the existence of the legendary creature. 

    The duo go on to relate a number of eyewitness accounts, as well as their own experiences, before bringing in other experts to corroborate their hypotheses and aid in documenting the elusive beast, leaving with only some footprints to show for their efforts. Skeptical readers will find the book's first half to be informative but predictable. 

    Read on...

    CRYPTOLINK: Mink Creek Idaho Bigfoot- FB/FB

    A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

    DALE DRINNON: Ogopogo

    I just managed to get this one out (It had been wiped the first time and I did it over again and put it out a second time).

    http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2013/12/ogopogo.html

    CONFUSION REIGNS WHERE THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN SITS

    The Gonzo Daily - Saturday
     
    The forthcoming year is the 100th Anniversary of the start of the First World War and I wonder how the media are going to deal with it. I don't mean the documentaries, the political analyses and the special tie-in book from Downton Abbey, but the entertainment business and more particularly, the music business. Ever since 1984, when everyone went Orwellian at least once, I have been expecting another big cash-in year. OK it happened in 1999 for the millenium, but I was expecting everyone to embrace fictional space travel, or at least make documentaries about Arthur C, Clark in 2001 and do a remake of Raise the Titanic in 2012, but the first didn't happen at all and the second was somewhat muted. Both my grandfathers fought in the First World War: one in the Royal Flying Corps and the other in the Royal Horse Artillery. The latter was seriously injured and finally died of his condition in 1954. One of my grandmothers was a Land Girl, and the other a schoolgirl who saw Zeppelins fly overhead, and so my childhood was immersed quite strongly in family memories of the conflict.
     
    So what's going to happen? In 2014 will we be too immersed in our own sense of self importance or preoccupied with our own problems to care about what happened 100 years before? Or will Simon Cowell present a Salute to Passchendaele and The Spice Girls reform again to sing 'Keep the Home Fires burning' while an inner city grime artist will name herself Dolly Gray (getting the war completely wrong) to present an urban version of Eric Bogle's elegiac 'The Green Fields of France.' Or will no-one care, and will "time, like an ever rolling stream" have indeed borne "all its sons away"? Ask me again in another 12 months.
     

    Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/12/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_28.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: www.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 54 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