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...




Friday, August 05, 2016

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 STRUGGLES SOMEWHAT

The Gonzo Daily - Friday/Saturday
 
So once again another week plods wearily off into the sunset as I write the finishing paragraphs of this week’s magazine. This week I am exceptionally jealous of one of our staff writers, John Brodie-Good, because he is presently in Alaska looking at Bowhead whales, which were until recently one of the rarest creatures on the planet, and something that i have always wanted to see. In fact’ although I have seen various dolphins and porpoises, and an orca back in the day when Legoland was Windsor Safari Park, and it was still considered ethical to house these magnificent creatures in a swimming pool,  I have never seen any of the great whales, except for a brief sighting of a fraction of a hump and the vanishing remains of the spume of what I was informed at the time was a humpbacked whale somewhere between the Canary Islands and the Straits of Gibraltar back in 1971.
 
TODAY'S WEIRD WEEKEND NEWS
The Devon Badger Group are going to be there this year, which will probably provoke some more sniping against us from those who still believe what the Government say about bovine tuberculosis. Personally I don’t believe what any government says about anything!
 
There has been another change to the Weird Weekend lineup, Glen Vaudrey is back again talking about the Health and Safety Beast and Richard will still be talking about almasty - the semi mythical ape man from Central Asia - prior to our second excursion to Russa next year. I hope that I am wrong, but it is looking as if a mixture of apathy, happenstance, and the fact that nobody has any money due to the Government's austerity measures, will probably call time on the Weird Weekend, at least for a while after this year. I always said that I would do ten and this one will be the seventeenth, but I will still be disappointed of it has to end. Ticket sales are the slowest ever. I strongly suspect that it is because of the financial insecurity that so many people are feeling at the moment, but I hope that it will turn itself around in the next few weeks. This year's Weird Weekend featuring our very own Steve Ignorant, sponsored by our very own Erik Norlander, compèred by me and the return of  Nuneaton's Mr Entertainment, Barry Tadcaster with his pal Orang Pendek, and featuring a whole cornucopia of high strangeness and cerebral silliness. It would make me very happy if I could sell some more tickets..
 
find out all about the Weird Weekend
buy tickets to the Weird Weekend:
 
And now for the news................
 
THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Maria Callas - Puccin...
Denny Laine, Paul McCartney And Wings
Merrell Fankhauser Interviews Cyrille Verdeaux
COMING THIS WEEKEND
THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem
 
 
Gonzo Magazine #193
 
We interview Martin Birke of the mighty Genre Peak about their extraordinary new album, Doug goes to see Peter Gabriel and Sting, and Alan concludes his visit to the Edinburgh Blues and Jazz Festival, while Jon muses on The Eagles and Anton LaVay and looks at  the most scurrilous book about the Rolling Stones... What other magazine gives you all this for free?
 
And there are radio shows from Strange Fruit, Mack Maloney, and Friday Night  Progressive. We also have columns from all sorts of folk including Roy Weard, Mr Biffo, Neil Nixon and the irrepressible Corinna. There is also a thrilling and slightly disturbing episode of Xtul. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and pademelons outside zoos(OK, nothing to do with small marsupials who have escaped from captivity, 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!!!
 
This issue features:
The Eagles, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dr Dre,Adam Lambert, The Who, Jack White, Ozzy Osbourne, Marillion, Rick Springfield, Don McClean, Joe Perry, Strange Fruit, Friday Night Progressive, Mack Maloney's Mystery Hour,
Samuel Clarke "Sandy" Pearlman, Lewis "Lewie" Steinberg, Roye Albrighton, Allan Curtis Barnes, Keith Gemmell, Rick Wakeman, Arthur Brown, The Beatles, The Golliwogs, James Young, Cymbalic Encounters, Richard Brautigan, Martin Birke, Genre Peak, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Alan Dearling, United Vibrations, Mop Mop Sound System, Reggae Got Soul, Lightnin’ Malcolm, Blues and Beyond, John Nemeth and Blue Dreamers, John Hunt, Chloe Louise Gray, Mr Biffo, Roy Weard, Richard Freeman, Batman, Hawkwind, Xtul, The Rolling Stones, Bono, Debbie Harry, Kylie Minogue, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, George Harrison, Neil Nixon, Walter Carlos
                                                                                  
Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
 
Issue 192 (Rick Wakeman and Brian May)
Issue 191 (Karnataka)
Issue 190 (Erik Norlander)
Issue 189 (Rick Wakeman at the O2)
Issue 187/8 (Yer holiday special)
Issue 186 (Beatles)
Issue 185 (Judge Smith)
Issue 184 (Mick Abrahams)
 
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:
 
SPECIAL NOTICE: If you, too, want to unleash the power of your inner rock journalist, and want to join a rapidly growing band of likewise minded weirdos please email me at jon@eclipse.co.uk The more the merrier really.
 
 
* 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.co.uk
 
* 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 56 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa, and two small kittens, one totally coincidentally named after one of the Manson Family, purely because she squeaks, puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish. 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, and the adventurous kittens?

BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF



Bigfoot Killings In New Mexico
In this special edition of Bigfoot Outlaw Radio, the fellas are joined by their good friend Brenda Harris. Brenda joins them to discuss some grave news ...

Original Patterson,Gimlin Bigfoot BLUFF CREEK calif footage 1967
Original Patterson,Gimlin Bigfoot BLUFF CREEK calif footage 1967.

What Evidence Is Hiding In The Bigfoot Discovery Museum? (Video)
Mike Rugg of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum takes time to answer some questions from their twitter page. Does bigfoot live forever? What evidence ...

NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Friday/Saturday

ON THIS DAY IN - 1944 - Polish insurgents liberated a German labor camp in Warsaw. 348 Jewish prisoners were freed. 
And now some more recent news from the CFZ Newsdesk

  • Dartmoor Lynx recaptured after three weeks on run
  • More than 10 invasive turtles of a kind that canno...
  • Plant lambs' ears and keep wool carder bees happy
  • Tooth wear sheds light on the feeding habits of an...
  • Warnings of imminent extinction crisis for largest...



  • 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)