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, February 21, 2015

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

What has Corinna's column of Fortean bird news got to do with cryptozoology?

Well, everything, actually!

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.


THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN IS ON THE ROAD AGAIN

The Gonzo Daily - Saturday (yes I know it is well early but read on)
 
And so we come to the end of another week, and Corinna and I are labouring long and hard to get this issue of the magazine finished so that we can get going tomorrow morning. We are visiting my  stepdaughter Olivia, her delightful other half Aaron and my Grand-daughter Evelyn, and after spending a couple of days with them, we shall be visiting my  other stepdaughter Shoshannah and her husband Gavin. However, as the first of them lives in Norwich, the second in Staffordshire, and we live deep in the bowels of darkest Devonshire just a few miles from the Cornish border I think that you will agree that we have a heck of a journey ahead of us over the next few days which is why this magazine will be gracing your inboxes earlier than usual.
 
However, making things even more complicated, I got a message on Facebook earlier this afternoon. It was from our quondam intern Saska, who is still a much loved member of our extended family. She had just taken delivery of an injured baby pigeon. Would we have it? The answer is, of course, yes. So in the kitchen in a plastic faunabox designed for pet cockroaches is a very small, and voraciously hungry ball of fluff. We have dressed its wounds, fed it and watered it, and named it ‘Dodo’ because we have no idea what gender it is, and it resembles - more than anything - a miniature dodo. These flightless birds which were persecuted to extinction about 350 years ago were giant flightless pigeons, and looking the baby in our kitchen you can see that this classification makes a lot of sense. The prognosis is poor because  it was rescued from Saskia’s grandmother’s cat, but when the universe gives you something to look after it is meet, right and one’s bounden duty to do one’s best for it.
 
So driving up the motorway tomorrow to spend a week touring the country will be me, Corinna, Mother, and quite possibly - if the universe decides to spare its life -  Dodo the pigeon.
 
So mote it be.
 
 

The Gonzo Weekly #118
www.gonzoweekly.com
 
Hawkwind, Tempest, Eliza Carthy, Daevid Allen, Jon Anderson, and Yes fans had better look out!
 
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#118) will soon available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/. It has Dave Brock from Hawkwind on the front cover, and an an exclusive interview with him by Rob Ayling inside. Doug Harr reports on Celtic Rock band Tempest and we send Eliza Carthy to a Desert Island, making it the first time we have ever sent anyone with an MBE to the island. There are shows from Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the titular submarine dwellers are still lost at sea, although I have been assured that they will hit land again soon. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and pademelons trying to choose (OK, nothing to do with small marsupials having difficulty in making choices, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
 

Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
 
 

All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
 
You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/
 

* 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/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit
 
* 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 55 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa 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 infantile orange cat?

GONZO WEEKLY #118

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

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

From CFZ-USA:

NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Saturday

ON THIS DAY IN 1848 - The Communist Manifesto was published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 

  • 'Rewilding' dingoes could help reverse decline of ...
  • Stamford's (Conneticut )SoundWaters Rescues 22 Bab...
  • Rare Asian black spotted turtles seized in Bengal ...

  • Cold-blooded animals grow bigger in the warm on la...

  • AND TO WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK... (Music that may have some relevance to items also on this page, or may just reflect my mood on the day)