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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

BIG CAT NEWS: Gloucestershire sighting/Farmers Weekly Poll




Big cat spotted crossing A40 in Andoversford
This is Gloucestershire


Farmers back big cat claims in FW poll


JON'S JOURNAL: Wot No Curlews?

For the third day running I went to Northam Burrows this afternoon, in an attempt to film the herd of curlews that we saw the other day. (Yes, the collective noun for a group of curlews is a 'herd'. Thank you for that, Corinna).

Nope, there was nothing there.

The only thing that we did see was a huge flock of some birds or other (possibly starlings) in the middle distance. Graham hiked off to get close enough to photograph them, but a dog being walked by a young bloke in garish sportwear ran up to them and the flock flew off.

The moral of the story here is, not only CHECK YOUR BATTERIES BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE which is not only common sense but pretty much self evident, but also a more philosophical one.

Basically, when one has a magickal experience due to the good offices of Mother Nature, and - believe me - seeing a whole herd of these comical birds skittering about earnestly, like badly animated clockwork figures (I was sooooo reminded of The Mouse and his Child) is a truly magickal experience - these things are one-offs, and should be treated as such. Mother Nature isn't some crappy cable network. Magickal experiences like a herd of curlews don't happen on the hour every hour with gaps for advert breaks.

No siree. It doesn't work like that.

So if - like me - you wish to be a humble supplicant worship at the altar of Mother Nature, you had better make sure your camera works properly. Here endeth the Gospel for today.

There were also so many people there including revolting adolescent males on trials bikes, and the aforementioned bloke in his designer sportware, that I began to get cross, so we went home via Boots (yes, I finally managed to get my diabetic shortbread HUZZAH!!!) and stopped off at Kennerland where we found that my gloomy prognostications were correct, and the recent cold snap did indeed kill off all the January frogspawn, which is now sadly rotting away (see bottom picture).

HELEN TAYLOR SENT ME THIS (bless her little cotton socks)


Williams and Lang's Australian Big Cats: do pumas, giant feral cats and ...

Scientific American (blog)
By Darren Naish February 13, 2012 Virtually all people interested in animals are aware of the so-called 'mystery big cat' phenomenon. Large, often black, cats are reported with apparent frequency from the eastern USA and the UK.



HAUNTED SKIES: Times (The) 15.9.62


OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

On this day in 1946 Ian Lavender was born. Lavender is best known for his role as Pike in Dad’s Army but also played a memorable role in time slip comedy Goodnight Sweetheart as the grown up son of Garry Sparrow, the series’ main character who took advantage of a time portal to commit bigamy in war time and early 21st century Britain.

And now the news:

India’s wolves struggle for survival
High noon for mackerel talks
Rare bird has humans flocking to Julian
Rare bird spotted after decades
Honeybees tell hornet predators to buzz off
Deer night-vision cameras in Welsh forests as cull...
How toilet paper is threatening Indonesia's tigers...
Mussels colony wiped out after Delphi Bridge Repai...
Environment's Effects On Evolution of Survival Tra...
Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi agree ...
Marcia Davis: Join the Great Backyard Bird Count

“Don’t tell him Pike!”

CRYPTOZOOLOGY NEWS: The Iceland serpent, and the Siberian mammoth explained

So the two great cryptzoological stories of the last week or so have been solved - apparently. First up is that bloody mammoth which was actually the better executed of the two media sensations.

The general opinion within the cryptozoological community both on this blog and elsewhere was that it showed a bear with a large salmon in its mouth. Now, it is claimed that the person who shot the original footage has come forward and denounced it as a fake.

Ludovic Petho came forward to say he shot the video that made headlines during a 10-day hike in Siberia's Sayan Mountains in 2011. He recognizes the footage as his own except for one thing: his original video never showed a mammoth.

"I don't recall seeing a mammoth; there were bears, deer, and sable, but no woolly mammoths. I had no idea my footage was used to make this fake sighting."


And the Icelandic river monster?

Finland's Miisa McKeown has analyzed the video, matching up the position of the monster's head with relation to static reference points. Her conclusion? The "monster" is actually stuck in one place on the river. The snaky thing looks as if it's swimming upstream because water is streaming past it. It's the moving water that creates the illusion of a swimming snake.

It appears that the monster was nothing more than a piece of fishing net snagged in a river.


The thing that I find particularly interesting is not that both videos were not what they pretended to be. I never thought they were. But that - if these explanations are true - they are completely at variance with what the cryptozoological community (who didn't believe in them either) thought that they were.

I have a sneaking suspicion that both these stories have some life in them yet!

KARL SHUKER: Mystery pink monster/the other grinning cat

Read on...

Read on...

Shark devours another shark whole


DALE DRINNON: Early Japan's connections to Sundaland/Archaic America/Cedar and Willow

New articles up on the Frontiers of Zoology blog dealing with the connections of early Japan to Sundaland and to Siberia:

And about the Archaic period in America and why it is like Atlantis:


New on Cedar and Willow:

Best Wishes, Dale D.