Review: Moa Sightings by Bruce Spittle.

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Paua Press Limited; 1st edition (January 1, 2010)
Language: English
Vol1

ISBN-10: 0473153564
ISBN-13: 978-0473153564

Vol2

ISBN-10: 0473153572
ISBN-13: 978-0473153571

Vol3

ISBN-10: 0473153580
ISBN-13: 978-0473153588

http://www.pauapress.com/

Once in a while, I get my hands on a book which makes me think “why on earth don’t more people write like this”? Most cryptozoological books are, basically, rubbish. Yes, there are a number of great books out there, but an awful lot just rehash previously covered stories, or dive into the paranormal and sensationalism to increase sales. This book is about as far removed as one can get from these works of tripe.

Split across three volumes, “Moa Sightings” is a real behemoth which, due to its high price tag, will not sell many copies. But anyone with a great interest in moas or New Zealand’s cryptozoology should sell a portion of the family silver and buy the whole set. In five words, the three books are incredible.

Hardback with full colour printing throughout, the books are very high quality indeed. The front cover, I feel, looks a little basic, but that really does not matter. Upon opening the book, you are greeted to a wonderful range of maps (there are probably hundreds of maps between the three volumes), portraits and biographies of most of the witnesses, drawings of skeletons and huge numbers of photographs of the areas in which the sightings occurred. This is a book which draws you into New Zealand. The maps and photographs help you picture the areas vividly in your mind; whilst the long and detailed discussions of each sighting help you assess the circumstances in which the sighting event occurred.

The analysis of the Freaney photograph for instance is 283 pages long. That is enough for a book alone on the photograph. Though the analysis is generally very thorough, and the photographs clear, I would have liked to have seen more photo measurement analysis, perhaps comparing the measurements and angles to a deer. This is a slight weak link in the book, and because of this it does not change my opinion that the photograph shows a young red deer, but in reality, this is pretty much the only negative point (and it did really make me consider my initial opinion). If Mr. Spittle published his analysis of the Freaney photograph as a separate, much smaller and more affordable book, I think he would do the world of cryptozoology a huge favour.

This book then is exactly how cryptozoology should be done. Has is changed my opinion on the Freaney photograph? No. Has it changed my opinion that there are no large (4ft tall+) species of moa still alive? No, I remain sure that they are extinct. Has it changed my opinion that there are no small species of moa still alive? Sort of I suppose; I think there is a high chance they lived until the 1800’s, but I don’t think there are any left alive.

To finish this review then, I am going to quote Mr. Spittle on why he formed Paua Press Limited in 2007: “Just as a paua [Haliotis, a species of New Zealand abalone] appears dull and nondescript on the outside but is of compelling interest when the surface dross is taken away, I am hopeful that the books my press publishes will have, at their centre, something of substance for the reader.” He is absolutely correct, this is an incredible book, “On The Track...” for moa enthusiasts. For God’s sake ask for it as a birthday present...

MB.

Bullhead bonanza (or not, as it turns out)

My biology class at school was always a little dull. We never really went on field trips, unless it was for a vitally important piece of coursework of course, but generally found ourselves stuck inside a large beige laboratory. So imagine my surprise when my younger sister bursts in exclaiming that her class had been out stream dipping on a stream I had never heard of, and that most importantly, they had caught some bullheads, miller’s thumbs, Cottus gobio, whatever you want to call them. This is our only freshwater sculpin, (a cottid as was pointed out earlier today by an anonymous reader) and it was not a species I had seen before. I set off the next day armed with a net, buckets and a friend to help catch them.

It took us a few minutes to find where they were hiding, and after a while we had our first bullhead. Admittedly, it was only about 10mm long, but still, it was a bullhead. More searching revealed a couple of juveniles, around 40mm long. But then we stumbled along a dead individual. And another. And then another. This was strange. Bullheads are long lived for small fish, and the chances of seeing these dead specimens all dying from old age was disproven due to the huge variation in size, from babies right up to huge 120mm adult males. By the end of the day, we had caught 6 bullheads of a range of sizes and seen others alive (plus a few young 3-spined sticklebacks and an adult female), but seen more dead ones in a state of decay. We found no dead sticklebacks, which is odd, and anyone thinking that my sisters class from the other day were to blame, they can’t have been because we went quite far upstream to catch ours whereas they went downstream.

We also found a putrid dead badger upstream with a huge pile of maggots on top. I chose not to tell my sister this...

I went down there again today briefly just to get some photos, and saw four dead specimens, and 3 live, one of which was certainly the large adult we caught last time. Does anyone have any ideas what could have caused this?

NEVER MIND THE AUROCHS

The Aurochs has played an extremely important part of human lives for thousands of years. In it’s wild state it was hunted to provide food, leather and tendons for bow strings. After being domesticated, it now decides the fate of billions of people worldwide thanks to its meat. At an estimated 1.53bn cattle in 2001, the species is clearly of massive importance in the modern world.

But back to the Aurochs. It is probable that it was domesticated 8,000-6,000 years ago by a number of different cultures around the world. It was exterminated in Britain somewhere between 4,100-2,750 years ago (or the Bronze age if you would like), but in the 13^th century (AD), the Aurochs was only left, in its wild state, in eastern Europe. In 1564, gamekeepers surveyed the lands and found 38 cattle. In 1627 the last female died, and the wild species became extinct.

Anyway, that is the background to the story. This morning, whilst researching Vampire Bat control, I got distracted and ended up reading Walker’s Mammals of the World (1999). It was here that I got distracted again by Artiodactyls, and got reading about wild cattle. The author then mentioned something extraordinary. Harrison (1972) had discussed possible Aurochs late survival in Iraq. D. L. Harrison had written in “The Mammals of Arabia” that the Aurochs could have survived into the early 20^th century in Iraq. After googling this, I can find the book for sale, but there is nothing about late Aurochs survival in Iraq. No website mentions it, only to say that the Aurochs probably became extinct in the Middle East and surrounding areas a few thousand years ago. Is there anyone out there who knows more about this, or would have access to a copy of the book? Please please let me know if you can, this could be a very interesting bit of sort-of crypto information.

A taxonomic footnote: Although it is usually given the name of Bos taurus, domesticated cattle have more resently been fitted into B. primigenius. European cattle developed from the subspecies B. p. primigenius, whilst the Indian Zebu was developed from B. p. namadicus. I have tried to avoid giving anything a scientific name in this blog; chances are when it comes out the taxonomy will be out of date!

The white hot flame.

White morphs of aquarium fish are relatively easy to find in aquaria. Albino Giant Danios, Convict cichlids, Tiger Barbs, Oscars, Kribensis, Guppies and Mollys are commonly found in pet shops, as are leucistic morphs of Bristlenose and Sailfin plecs. Leucistic morphs occur when there is a lack of melanin pigment (the pigment that causes dark colours in organisms) over the body, but not on the eyes. You may have read Jon’s blog this morning whereby he mentions some white Firemouth cichlids. These are common aquarium fish, mainly bought for their attractive red throats and ease of care and breeding. The photo below shows a male engaged in a visual threat display.

I will now take the time to completely move off topic and talk about visual threat displays in cichlids. Firemouths and their genus (Thorichthys) are one of the few cichlids that have evolved a mechanism to reduce the amount of energy expended when defending their territory. Cichlids as a group are extremely territorial, and males usually go for the full blown method of defence; attack. As a way of defending your livelihood, it is a good technique. It is fast, as the biggest male usually wins, but often wounds are sustained which need healing. This healing, together with the actual act of fighting, incurs a cost to the fish, that of using energy from food to provide energy to perform these two acts. This energy would have been spent normally on getting big, and thus the fish is able to win more fights. Cichlids don’t have great eye sight, and as they usually live at the bottom of rivers and lakes, visuals are not normally that important, so they are usually dull in colour, or coloured in very obvious patterns (the convict is a good example, being banded completely in black and white). Firemouths have however evolved a method of defence which reduces the energy lost by fighting. The red throat from which they get their common name can be expanded to produce a very obvious signal. Indeed, in a study by Evans and Norris (1996), males with larger and redder throats won more display conflicts than those that did not, regardless of size! So, a very large, but dull male would lose to a colourful, but much smaller male. Only if the opponents are matched in colour will they actually fight. Interestingly, and again, in opposition to most cichlids, female Thorichthys are almost as colourful as males, but smaller. In normal cichlid pairs, the male defends the territory, leaving the female to tend the eggs and fry, but with these guys, both sexes help defend. This makes the territory more secure, and ensures better survival for the fry.

But how have they evolved this method of display? With a cichlids standard eye sight and choice of habitat this display would not really be seen! It would seem then that Thorichthys have evolved better eyesight than normal cichlids, but also live in clearer waters where they can see each other properly. But to my knowledge this experiment has never been carried out! Never mind. Interestingly, you may have seen Jon or I blogging about out Thorichthys sp. “Mixteco Blue”, an undiscribed species. These guys don’t have the same throats as Firemouths, but it will be interesting to see if they have the same displays. Anyway, to the crux of this blog.

Jon spoke about white Firemouths the other day (photo above), presumably these are either albinos, or leucistic. Either way, these guys don’t have the red throats that are as we have seen an integral part of their lifestyle. So, will this change their display? I would expect that it does. If we can get hold of some of these guys and raise them to adulthood, we will be able to perform experiments on them to see if the display is actually present or if they omit it completely and resort straight away to violence. If they do try to display, what will the outcome be? As the red is reduced drastically, with they just give up and fight? But my main point is that if these fish do display to each other, fail to resolve the struggle visually and end up fighting, is it right to breed fish which are unable to perform their natural behaviour? Personally, I don’t think it is. We will certainly be having a go at breeding them, but not to sell on the offspring, but just to see if there is any change in behaviour, but I am sure most who keep them will not be so scrupulous. I would love to know if it is just me who thinks this, or if I have any more support out there!

BITTERN BOOGIE DROPOUT

Max has just finished his A-levels, which is - I suppose - a perfectly valid reason for him not having done any bloggo stuff for yonks. However he has managed to sneak out a few times to sit in his car and listen to Tarkus with a peculiar look on his face, and occasionall to do a little bit of bird watching. He usually takes his camera with him, and over the last few months has built up a fantastic library of images of the wildlife of the Wells region of Somerset. Here are some of them...

Bitterns are very strange birds. Being a heron they have the families typical features of a long bill, long legs and a fondness for fishing. My two local nature reserves, Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall, have been given large grants in order to attract bitterns. They need extensive reed beds, but with water levels such that they can build a nest which is at ground level, but not in danger of any flooding. The two nature reserves are at such an altitude that they are not in risk of flooding from global warming, even if the estimate of 17ft higher sea levels (the last interglacial period had sea levels 22ft higher than today, so this figure is not really, in a long term view, anything to worry about) is found to be too small, then the bitterns will be fine as they are well above sea level. This makes the colony sustainable in the long term.

Anyway, bitterns are now breeding at Ham Wall, which is great news. I went down there a few weeks ago to see what I could see, and I saw 7 episodes of flight from the bitterns, plus 3 lots of booming from the males. The photos from this trip are shown below. At Shapwick Heath I have seen 3 bittern flights, but they are not currently known to be breeding.

As an interesting postscript, there is a Little Bittern at Ham Wall at the moment. This is a rare bird indeed, not currently breeding in Britain. They are found all over Europe, apart from Britain. It would not surprise me if within 20 years they begin to breed in Britain. At the bottom of this page is some footage of it being bitterny.

HEY HEY MAMA SAID THE WAY YOU MOVE, GONNA MAKE YOU SWEAT GONNA MAKE YOU GROOVE

Hopefully most of you will have read the initial Gurt Dog story from yesterday, plus Dan Holdsworth’s posting this morning. To answer his question, posted as a comment on the original story, in a public way, the sighting occurred somewhere to the North East of Westbury Sub-Mendip along one of the country lanes. Looking on Google Earth, you can find the rough area by searching the above village and moving up the hill to the North East, moving to an eye altitude of 12000ft, with Priddy toward the top right of the image, Westbury down the left hand side about halfway up, and Ebbor Gorge and Wookey Hole Caves in the bottom right of the image. From this position, you can pan to the East until you reach a village called Rookham. This village marks the easterly border of the sighting area. This should give you a good view of the area, mostly of fields and a small wooded gorge. The sighting would thus have been at quite a high elevation, between 700-900ft above sea level. A rough set of coordinates is: 51º14’10 to 51º15’00 North, and 2º42’17 to 2º39’00 West.

For those without Google Earth, Google Maps will work fine. In fact, it is probably best to look at both Earth and Maps to get a good feel for the area, only Maps shows the roads along which the sighting must have occurred. Just follow the above directions with this URL: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?daddr=Westbury+Sub+Mendip,+Wells,+Somerset,+UK&geocode=CUqSmQK1JgThFVreDQMdz4vW_w&dirflg=&saddr=wells&f=d&hl=en&sll=51.246283,-2.716713&sspn=0.022458,0.055017&ie=UTF8&ll=51.23043,-2.669334&spn=0.044932,0.110035&z=13

The village of Priddy has always had an association with big cat stories and sightings, most of which are in the roads toward the South East of the village. They pop up from time to time in the local paper, along with the occasional livestock kill. Now, I am sure that some big cat sightings are spectral in origin, but the vast majority are of flesh and blood animals in the way we understand it. Other than the generalised Black/Gurt/spectral Dog stories, I was unaware of any sightings of the fellow around the North of Wells, until now of course.

Looking at the website that Dan Holdsworth posted up earlier, if you match up the images of North Somerset, then click on “view layers”, and tick the box on Europe marked “Europe BRGM 1:1.5M Faults”, you will see a series of black lines, along which faults lie. If you match the One Geology map up with either Google Earth or Maps, it can be seen that Westbury Sub-Mendip lies very very close to the most northern fault in Somerset. However, if you match up the coordinates on the One Geology with those obtained from Google Earth, the village ends up being much further inland than it actually is. If the position of the fault is correct, then the village of Westbury Sub-Mendip lies close enough to the fault for this sighting to provide evidence for Dan’s theory about faults and zooforms being linked, but I cannot find if the fault is still active. I have found a list of earthquakes in Somerset, but this is unfortunately only dates, not locations.

However, my computer decided to restart, and for the life of me I cannot find the webpage again! So, instead we have some details of earthquakes that have occurred in the Wells area. Mathew of Paris recorded the effects of the Wells' earthquake on December 21, 1248:

“...an earthquake occurred in England, by which (as told to the writer of this work by the Bishop of Bath in whose diocese it occurred) the walls of the buildings were burst asunder, the stones were torn from their places, and gaps appeared in the ruined walls. The vaulted roof which has been placed on the top of the church of Wells by the great efforts of the builder, a mass of great size and weight, was hurled so as to strike great terror into all who heard it....”

The Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries for 1895 gives details about a number of shocks around Priddy, Wells, Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury on December 30, 1893. At Wookey it seemed as if the earth was assuming an undulating motion, such as is observed on the waves of the sea. The first of the shocks, for there were several, was preceded by what seemed to be 'a terrific explosion' (Anon, 1895). This explosion is the noise that the fault made as it slipped, thus showing that the fault was close by.

Ahah! My efforts have been rewarded! Anyone seriously interested in researching zooforms and faults will enjoy this groovy tool. Follow the link below and hover over the “Earthquakes” tab at the top. Move the mouse down to “Interactive UK Earthquakes Map”. In the new window you can select the area you want to look at, then fiddle around with the tabs on the left hand side. Zooming in on the sighting area there are 5 earthquakes occurring within 10kms of the rough sighting area. One occurred 8kms away, one 4kms, one 7kms and 2 10kms away. Evidence? I should say so!

OUT AND ABOUT WITH MAX: Egrets

Max is in the middle of his A-Levels at the moment, which is - I suppose - a perfectly valid reason for him not having done any bloggo stuff for yonks. However he has managed to sneak out a few times to sit in his car and listen to Tarkus with a peculiar look on his face, and occasionall to do a little bit of bird watching. He usually takes his camera with him, and over the last few months has built up a fantastic library of images of the wildlife of the Wells region of Somerset. Here, in a new series, are some of them...

Here, at a place called Shapwick, back in March, we see two rare egrets.

For those of you not in the know, egrets are any of several heron species, most of which are white or buff, and several of which develop fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season.

Many egrets are members of the genera Egretta or Ardea which contain other species named as herons rather than egrets. The distinction between a heron and an egret is rather vague, and depends more on appearance than biology. The word "egret" comes from the French word "aigrette", referring to the long filamentous feathers that seem to cascade down an egret's back during the breeding season.

They were hunted to extinction in Britain during the 19th Century, mainly because the aforementioned feathers were so sought after.

However, they have been very succesful in recolonising the UK with four species existing here now..

However, it is unusual to see two species together at once, and Max was very pleased to be able to photograph a little egret Egretta garzetta (left) and a great egret Ardea alba (right) together.

A non-cryptozoological trip to Redditch

You should all have by now read Ross’ turn of events regarding last Sunday’s auction. Now, I am not going to attempt to pretend that this was a purely cryptozoological trip, far from it; it was a chance for those who went to get their hands on some great new fish. Ross wanted to get his tanks started with something attractive, but easy to keep; Jon wanted anything with a sp. “something” at the end of its name; Emma wanted some fish for her community tanks; and I wanted both anything with sp. “something” (this means that this certain fish has not been scientifically described, but it is probably from the genus before the “sp.” part. So, Cryptoheros sp. "Honduran red point" relates to an undiscribed cichlid from the Cryptoheros genus, probably from Honduras) and something to sit with a couple of other medium sized cichlids in a 3ft tank opposite my chair to entertain me.

After paying the rather high entry fee, we were given a load of free tubs of food, which we worked out as being worth about £5 more than the entry ticket, so I wasn’t too disappointed. After a quick general meeting (which none of our party had much to say, we were not members), we listened to a talk by Bernd Degen, a Discus breeder and show master for over 30 years. He talked about first showing Discus (with some great photos of the massive Japanese shows) and some of the techniques people use to get that “perfect” discus, then he moved on to a talk about keeping discus in a planted aquarium, something I have always advocated.

After a break, the auction began. The first lot was exactly what I wanted, a 4” male Nandopsis salvini, a medium sized predatory cichlid from Guatemala. This is a stunning fish not that often seen in the shops. When it is, it is usual £5+ for a juvenile about 1-2” long. My male over 8 times that size for £8 was a bargain.

From then on in, our table ended up buying about12-15 lots of fish; I cannot even remember what we got! Emma got hold of her community angelfish and an unusual species of Corydoras catfish, Jon got his beloved Rams (at about half the cost of buying from a shop, and better quality) as well as Aequidens sp. “Peru” (a nice smallish cichlid, similar to the hobby staple the Blue Acara, see top photo); whilst Ross ended up with another undiscribed species (Krobia sp. “red cheek” if you are interested) and various other fish to fill his tanks up with. I got myself a group of Thorichthys sp. 'Mixteco Blue' (see bottom photo) which are currently sat in Jon’s local the Farmer’s Arms. These cost me about £3 for 8 youngsters. This is just plain stupid!

Following from the excitement of the auction, we had Alf Stalsberg, a writer and traveller who was speaking about Aequidens sp. “Silver Saum”. Time for taxonomic cock up! Aquarists may well have heard of a fish called a “Green Terror” (why? Because they are generally a metallic green, and are seriously aggressive). Now, this was thought to be a species called Aequidens rivulatus. This was debunked a good few years back, and the hobby’s fish is now known as A. sp. “Gold Saum” because of the gold edges to the fins. A. sp. “Silver Saum” is very similar, but has silver edges to the fins. Stalsberg went out to collect these fish, and found that these three cichlids represented different species. Now, the Americans (his words not mine!) “walked in and think they know everything!” and said that this was rubbish, A. rivulatus was the species in the hobby, and the others were just geographical variants. Well, says Stalsberg, do variants of a species occurring in the same river system breed only with fish with their own colour edging? No says he, they would all breed together. The fact they he has witnessed a separate breeding divide in the wild proves that they are different species. I for one feel that this argument will carry on for a long time...

After a quick raffle, we went home again to get the fish into their new aquaria. The traffic was terrible and I for one got back about an hour later than expected, but hey, if this is the price to pay for such a superb day, then I would gladly do it again.

THE UNIDENTIFIED FISHES OF YOUTUBE PART TWO: An Unidentified Submarine Object

Round 2 of the unidentified fish blogs. Here, we go all crypto and look at a U.S.O. from a lake somewhere. (Sadly, we have no idea where, which makes things more confusing). In the film, we see a group of small orange-yellow “things” surfacing and dropping repetedly, before dropping and not reappearing. This is clearly not one animal, so the cameraman's idea that it is a manatee is so wrong that I am going to stop midsentence.

Little groups of the things break off from time to time and disappear quickly. Now, I can think of two suggestions as to what it may be, but they both have their faults.

1. A group of small fish that are being corralled into a ball by an organised group of predators. Depending on where the footage was filmed, it could be a group of bass (small or large mouthed) or perch that are attacting the small fish. This accounts for the rising and falling of the fish in the water column plus the smaller groups splitting off. The disappearence of the fish occurs when the predators are full, and leave to digest their meal. However, if predators were attacking, there would be some splashes from boh the small fish, and larger splashes from the predaors. Plus, bright orange bait fish? I've not seen many species that are this colour.

2. Snakehead fry. Yay! Snakeheads! When snakeheads spawn and the eggs hatch, the parents push the young up to the surface to fill their “lungs” with air. If the babies don’t inflate their “lungs” quickly, they die. Snakehead fry are bright orange-yellow, which accounts for the colour. They are also not prone to jumping out of the wach much, which accounts for the lack of surface movement. The small groups are quickly herded back into the main group by one of he parents, which accounts for the short-lived nature of the small groups. At 2:21 a small fish jumps out of the water. The orange group drops down again, probably because the adults moved off to get rid of this interloper into their area, before surfacing again when the adults push them back up.

This too has its problems. The only footage I have seen of snakeheads exhibiting this behaviour shows them doing it in shallower water, usually with some cover from plants and rocks. The main argument against it however, is that snakeheads are not found in English speaking countries (as natives), and any local would have no trouble identifying a cresh of baby snakeheads as being so. This could well be video footage of introduced snakeheads in the USA breeding (as if there was not enough evidence), if it is indeed from the USA.

THE UNIDENTIFIED FISHES OF YOUTUBE - Part Three

Time for a slight change now I feel. We can now look at a number of different videos showing undiscribed fish. First is this handsome fellow:

It is another cafish, but this time it is from the family Aucheripteridae, or the driftwood catfishes. These are a cracking group that is rarely seen in captivity because few people want a catfish that sits under driftwood all day and is generally of a nervous disposition. I, obviously, love them to bits.

I have no idea what this fellow is, so that will do for now on taxonomy. There is one interesting footnote to this specuies though. The chap in the film is a male which is shown by a very strange modification. If you look at his anal fin, he first few rays of it are modified into a copulatory organ much like that seen in fish like guppys and platys. This family of catfish are the only ones to have evolved such a device, making them a very interesting group indeed.



Here is another Loricariidae catfish. Nothing to say here other than it is a male again.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stWLsqJFfRs

THE UNIDENTIFIED FISHES OF YOUTUBE PART ONE

Youtube is a powerful tool. I spent some time this morning looking around its archive to try and find something interesting to witter about for a bit. So here we are, a look at the undescribed species of Youtube.

We had best start with some fish. First we have this very attractive Loricariidae, or, a plec. These are common inhabitants of aquariums, but they are either one of the huge species which are sold as “only growing to “4”” and the size of the tank”, or one of the stunning “L-numbers” which are almost always wild caught, very pretty and astoundingly expensive. £30 is about what you need for one of the more common species, but individuals selling for multiples of hundreds are fairly commonplace. This is an adult male, so at about 7cm he is one of the smaller species. The thickened first ray on his pectoral fins show him to be a sexually mature male, ready to defend his site from all comers.

It is a Venezuelan species, which in itself is nothing unusual, but if in the video you look closely 26 seconds through, you should notice fronds on the front if he fish’s sucking mouth. These are modified sensory barbels which help in the search for food. Not many Loricariidae have these, so this species is unusual in having them. It is thought to be from the genus Leporacanthicus, but appears to be the smallest species in the group: the others all get over 20cm in length. Its dorsal fin appears to be much more triangular than all the other species in the genus, but hey, I am not a taxonomist.

Yet.

Back-dating the Somerset Cat.

On Monday, I went on a field trip. Field trips in Geology are a common occurrence; what better way to learn about rocks than to get out there and look? We were off to a place called Vallis Vale in East Somerset, the site of an unconformity. An unconformity occurs when sediments are laid down, folded so the beds lie at an angle, and then eroded.

Younger sediments form on top of the old sediment in typical straight beds, and an unconformity is created. They are only visible when falling sea levels and colliding continents cause the unconformity to rise above “normal” ground level.

Cutting by a river or quarrying also helps. You can see in the photo the different dips of the beds. The beds themselves can be dated by looking at the fossils within them; the rock below is from the Carboniferous period, and the rock above is from the Jurassic. This site is geologically important as it was described in the world's first Geological Survey memoir in 1846 and helped establish the science. Anyway...

In the minibus on the way up, through the sounds of Rush’s “2112”, I overheard my teacher talking to the lad sat in the front seat that he had seen a “black panther” crossing this road at night. I realised where we were, and found that we were about 800m from the field in which the big cat has been killing dozens of sheep! Hooray!

The next day I stayed behind to ask him about it. He said he had been driving along the road at about 2145 to take his son’s babysitter home, when out of a wood on the left this Labrador walked out onto the road. He stopped to see if it was ok (clearly a dog walking around on its own is a cause for concern), but it suddenly dawned on him that it was a big cat. He stopped the car and watched the cat watch him. It carried on it’s way to the right, and he can remember clearly pressing the button to wind the window up; just in case.

He also said that his first encounter of big cats (or rather, something) happened at around the same time when climbing in Cheddar Gorge. He was getting up to the top of the ridge in an area where no people go because it is very heavily wooded. He got to the top of the ridge, and found an area of scraped ground with a large mound of foul smelling dung deposited inside. He didn’t recognise it as being something he was familiar, but he left it due to the difficulties in getting it back down again.

My teacher is not unknowledgable when it comes to animals; parts of teaching geology necessitate a good knowledge of the natural world, and I would take his account as highly credible. The diagnostic features he remembers are; very long thin tail, jet black colour (“such that if it was hidden in bracken or a ditch, you could come within 3ft of it and not notice it was there” he said), slightly pointed ears and a very calm demeanour. It’s total length was about 2m long.

This is all very interesting, but there was one more thing. The sighting happened 14 years ago.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Back in early February, as I am sure you remember, the British Isles had a flurry of snow. Here in Somerset, we had our fair share, and I - being the good field-man I am - went up to the usual place to see if Mr. Kitty had left any traces of his existence. The farmer had moved his sheep away into shelter over the cold snap, so I knew that there would be no new kills to poke.

I battled my way up to the field, parked up, got out and had a look around. I was extremely surprised to see the amount of snow prints I did (nothing feline though), and got round to the fun business of identifying them all, as all good naturalists should. Now, I know what most of these are, but the real question is, do you, the CFZ blog readers, have any idea what these prints are from? The person who sends in the most accurate answers as to what the following 8 photos show wins a year’s subscription to either The Amateur Naturalist or Animals & Men magazine, it’s your choice! Answers can be sent to max@cfz.org.uk. The number at the end of the text next to the photo shows the question number.

First up, we have this image. Any ideas? They are right down to the ground (3”), so we must be dealing with something with fairly small feet for its body size.

The two prints are about 6” apart, and each print is 1.5” wide. Claws are clearly visible, which are short but thick. The central pad is also diagnostic. [1]

Ok, now try this. We have two prints, which plunge very deep into the snow with a pretty large amount of kicked back snow. The prints are about 1-1.5” in diameter, and are about 1’ apart. [2]


Moving briefly to a photo I took near my house, what have we here? We have thinner snow, maybe an inch, with two sets of prints. One very large long one and two smaller distinct prints. The prints are about 2” wide. Any ideas? long one and two smaller distinct prints. The prints are about 2” wide. Any ideas?







Moving briefly to a photo I took near my house, what have we here? We have thinner snow, maybe an inch, with two sets of prints. One very
































[3]

































And this one? An odd one this. The snow is very thin here. [4]































And this? Four points originating from a central source. [5]


































Right, let’s get tough. The next few photos are fairly indistinct, and I won’t be adding my suggestions and hints for any of these. Good luck!































[6]

[7]

[8]

Oh, and just for fun, this is the amount of prints that you get around a decaying carcass as scavengers, errr, scavenge for meat left on the bones.

An opossum's tail

Opossums are a group of about 90 different species occurring only in the western hemisphere, occurring from southern South America right up to Canada. The most famous species is Didelphis virginiana, the Virginia opossum. It looks vaguely like, and is usually portrayed as being, a giant rat with a fluffy coat, when actually it is a marsupial that happens to benefit from human habitation as it uses houses for shelter and food (scavenging for scraps) in the same way that rats do. I guess it’s partly hairless tail doesn’t help its cause...

Possums are a group of about 65 different species occurring in Australia, Sulawesi and New Guinea. The most commonly encountered species is Trichosurus vulpecula, the common brush-tailed possum. At a maximum of 4.5kg, it is not far off the above species in size, but it’s bushy tail, shorter muzzle and darker colouration make it easy to tell apart. It too likes people’s houses for the same reasons, and usually it causes an annoyance for people who have to sleep with them running over the roof every night.

Now, although there is only one letter different between “possum” and “opossum”, apparently this causes a problem for some people. Google for instance, throes up dozens of photos of both possums and opossums when you google “possums”, mainly of D. virginiana. Why on earth does this species have the common name of “possum”, when it is nothing of the sort?

Unlike other common name confusions, which are usually due to visual similarities between species, D. virginiana looks very little like a, for instance, T. vulpecula. It must then be pure and simple laziness which causes people to mix the two names up. Why bother to say “opossum” when you can say the easier “possum”? Waste of time innit? Whose gonna care ‘bout one letta?

Hummm.

The catalyst for this short rant is a video (http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Australia/). Although very funny, and the vocals say “possum”, they cock it up by depicting a very rat-like D. virginiana with the long muzzle and nearly hairless tail. Oddly enough, the idea that possum attacks are the “number one reason for a day off” is, according to an Australian friend, complete rubbish, mainly because they only attack people in extreme circumstances. But how hard would it have been to google “possum”, looked in Wikipedia or whatever site first comes up, and found a representative possum from Australia?

Again, why bother? What’s Joe Public going to care? Well, if I had my way, they damn well would. I bet even 8yr old me could have told you the difference between possums and opossums. Why not everyone else?

A picture's worth a thousand cryptids (OK that headline is completely meaningless but Jon thought it up, and I have to humour the old chap)

For this evening/morning/whenever you read this you are going to be talked at by me about the importance of photography and being a naturalist.

Digital photography is quickly becoming a very mainstream pastime. No longer do you need to faff about with darkrooms and expensive films; a simple household computer is all you need. The advantage of the technological revolution is that equipment drops rapidly in price over time (just look at widescreen televisions; you can pick up a 32” LCD TV for £500, a couple of years ago they were over double that!) whilst the quality of the goods increases (you can look at digital cameras this time). So, we are getting double benefits: prices for goods are dropping as the goods get better and better. It’s a great situation to be in, and with the current recession reducing demand for luxury goods (cars, for instance, have seen an unprecedented 35% drop in demand this year compared like for like to last year), if you can afford to buy a good digital camera, now is the time to do it!

In this series of blogs (yes I know, I should be following a trail of dead sheep, but the famer has moved them indoors for a while, so the cat has buggered of elsewhere), I will be looking at what to look for in a digital camera, if you are a naturalist. I could talk at great length about D-SLRs (digital single lens reflexes), but for the moment I am going to discuss more affordable options: entry level cameras.

In the above photo, the black dots are starlings.

A basic camera will set you back about £100 (roughly) and will probably have a 3x optical zoom, still and video modes, about 8.0 megapixels, a macro mode and a fairly large screen. A 3x zoom is not exactly superb, but all the other features are essential for a naturalist. Still and video modes gives you flexibility when shooting without needing two separate cameras, 8.0 megapixels allows you to produce a fairly large image which can be printed out at a later date up to about an A4 size, the large screen allows you to clearly focus on your subject, whilst the macro mode allows you to take clear photos of small flowers/invertebrates. These cameras are usually pocket sized, and are very easy to carry around in a pocket or handbag, and are aimed squarely at beginners, or people who don’t want to fuss around with photography.

Most of the settings are automatic, and there is usually a small manual override on some settings, but usually very little. A large memory card is essential to make sure that you have enough space for images, no matter what happens. So, if you do see that elusive big cat you have been chasing for ages, you want to be able to keep taking photographs for the full duration that you can see the animal and not have to worry that you are going to run out of space on the memory card, which will prevent you from taking any more photos. You don’t need expensive aftermarket image enhancer programs either. Windows XP/Vista (and I assume its equivalents) comes with a “fix” tab in the image viewing screen. It is not fancy, but if you are shooting at night you can enhance the brightness to pick out any figures in the gloom. You can crop the image in the same way.

Cropping cuts out a piece of the image to allow you to take out areas outside of the subject to enhance the look of the image. You can also use it to show a particular far away object in a better zoom, letting you, as I said earlier, determine between a bustard and a goose.

If your budget will stretch to it, a camera with a better optical zoom is a good investment for obvious reasons (to look at Jon’s article the other day, a bigger zoom allows you to see if it was a bustard or a goose when you look at the photo afterwards). Some manufacturers will con you by telling you the digital zoom. This is something quite different to optical zoom (where lenses move inside the camera to zoom), where the camera zooms in digitally on the image. It gives the impression of a bigger zoom, but when you look at the photo on the computer, it will probably be very grainy. You could get exactly the same results by cropping the image from your computer.

Beware however, as you move up from the beginner’s pocket sized cameras, the need to incorporate more space for lenses to move necessitates the need for a larger lens, so the size of the camera tends to increase from this point onwards. But, these more expensive cameras come with customisable features, allowing you to fiddle manually with things like ISO, exposure settings and white balance to produce more tailored images. Image stabilisation (helpful for shooting fast moving objects, or when you are moving) is also a very handy thing to have.

But why am I taking the time to talk to you about photography in a zoological blog? It is because I have a dream.

A dream of a day when everyone, interested in zoology or not, takes a camera with them everywhere they go. How many more photos of cryptids would there be if everyone took a camera around with them? The quality of cameras is rising rapidly, and their use to naturalists is increasing. I find myself wanting to kick people after I talk to big cat witnesses when I realise that although the big cat is a regular in their area/field they never thought to bring a camera with them. A not insubstantial amount of big cat sightings are made face to face with the cat as both sides stare at each other in surprise. Meetings like this can go on for minutes on end, think of how many photos you could take in this time! Even if the first photo wasn’t brilliant, you would still have lots of time to tweak the settings for a better next shot. Why on earth don’t people do this! One of the best ways to prove something’s existence is to photograph it; for the price of one piece of hardware. A small price to pay methinks.

Plus of course, cameras are kinda nice for photographing the kids growing up, family events or holidays. Talk about killing two birds with one stone...