Briton snaps pic of 'Bownessie'

upi ^ | Feb. 18, 2011

[JoeProBono]

WINDERMERE, England - A British man said he used his cellphone to snap a picture of what he said is "Bownessie," a legendary creature in England's Lake Windermere.

Tom Pickles, 24, said he snapped the picture of the creature, known as the English counterpart to Scotland's Loch Ness monster, Feb. 11 while on a kayaking exercise with his company, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

Pickles said the creature was the size of three cars and was visible for about 20 seconds.

"Its skin was like a seal's but its shape was completely abnormal -- it's not like any animal I've ever seen before," Pickles said.

Locals said the picture represented the eighth Bownessie sighting in five years.

David Farnell of Farnell's Photographic Laboratory in Lancaster, England, said the picture appears real but is difficult to verify due to its small file size from being taken on a phone.

Ian Winfield, a lake ecologist at the University of Lancaster, said the sightings may have been large catfish and the viewers are "misjudging" the size. He said there are no known creatures in the lake matching the reported size.

"We run echo sounding surveys every month and have never found anything," he said.

[mnehring]

[JoeProBono]

Muskrat

[mnehring]

Maybe it is just one of these.

[JoeProBono]

[PA-RIVER]

Ah, The Chocolate Nessi from Norleans.

[JoeProBono]

[DejaJude]

Looks like a string of fishing net buoys to me.

[TheOldLady]

Hubby and I didn’t see anything like that in Lake Windermere when we stopped there. We hiked all the way up to Alcock Tarn, too. Plenty of view from up there.

We didn’t see the Loch Ness Monster either, unless you count the giant plaster statue of it outside the local restaurant and tourist trap at the loch.

[Baynative]

[Baynative]

I’m LOLing out loud!

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Not to be a kill-joy, but Lake Windemere isn't particularly deep like Ness (Loch Ness being just less than a 1/4 mile deep). Seems like it would be hard for a large creature to hide himself in a couple of hundred feet of water. And a big reptile has to eat an awful lot of food. IIRC, an adult great white (I know...it's a fish) eats 3% of its body weight daily (with a calf eating around 10%).

If a Nessy-like creature weighed a couple of tons and ate only 1% of its body weight daily, that would be 400 lbs a day (or a whopping 144,000 lbs a year).

That's a lot of trout!

[JoeProBono]

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

It’s a selkie!

[stormer]

Interesting side note about Beatrix Potter - she was a mycologist and is the first person to have recognized lichens as the symbiotic relationship between fungi and bacteria. A monumental finding, but ignored because of her gender. Also, her scientific illustrations are among the finest...

[JoeProBono]

Alcock Tarn in February, one of the many walks from Titteringdales with some spectacular views of the village, Windermere Lake and the surrounding fells.

[JoeProBono]

[Baynative]

Tarns look a lot like lakes, it seems.

[JoeProBono]

BEATRIX POTTER 1866-1943 Most know Beatrix Potter as creator of Peter Rabbit; fewer know that for more than three decades she was, as Mrs. Heelis, a sheep farmer in the beautiful Lake District of England. This article is more from the point of veiw as the latter, and hopefully will give a more pastoral view of the artist and her portrayal of the shepherd's dog

[Jeff Chandler]

[Ueriah]

It’s a Magic leopleradon!