Two large, golden eyes and an upraised nose float to the surface, tearing algae carpeting the bogwater. Unblinking and seemingly inanimate, life thrives around this behemoth. Scum sloughs from its brow onto its eye, causing it to blink; only the fly on its nose notices, buzzing away. 

Sitting on the bank, with my binoculars focused, I see that the creature's black oval pupils are finally stirring. They follow forms flitting between wide-leafed vegetation, reedy grasses, slender trees, but focus on one dipping and diving into the mire: a wayward Teal dabbling for water bugs.

The duck drifts unknowingly closer; the frog's eyes cross, and its body tenses slightly as the animal nearly touches its snout. The bird plunges back down into the water, its black and white tail pointing upwards and feet splayed; like the snap of a mouse trap, the predator lurches forward, its maw suddenly stretching to encapsulate its prey. Just as quickly, the amphibian's jaws snap closed, crushing its meal with a great splash and muffled squawk. The swamp's peace disturbed, all other life flees the scene in brief, chaotic terror. 

Adjusting, the giant opens its mouth slightly, clamping down at another angle repeatedly, compacting its food. With jerky movements and an undulating throat, its eyes push down, sinking into its skull; the duck is forcefully swallowed. The bog soon forgets the violence, settling into a new stillness. The creature slowly sinks. Its rounded body flattens and settles back into the mud. A lost feather and wavering, black hole in the greenery is all that hints at what lurks below.

Hidden here, deep within the swamps, fens, and bogs, sits the world's largest amphibian. I call it the Great Swamp Frog.

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This entry is from a field journal, documenting an encounter in Ohio in an area once known as the Great Black Swamp. The page includes quick sketches, numerous notes, and detailed illustrations showing off animal behavior, anatomy, and other observations. These are clues to where and when this story takes place; it is a call to go see and verify this account. The journal is ancient and fragile, with brown, tattered, crumbling pages filled with various stains, smears, and debris. It may be 100% factual. Yet, it is just as likely to be completely fictitious - only the author knows. And the author, and others like them, have a complicated track record.

This journal is a book called a BCWPA Field Guide. For the most part, they are personal field journals with observation notes, questions, thoughts, and drawings in a style unique to each individual. Created by a club of naturalists, there are hundreds of thousands in existence, with each member devoted to filling out a page once every two weeks with the things they saw and learned. Some journals are a few hundred pages, others less than fifty; some books are thousands of years old, others only a few months, with new ones always in progress. The journals are collected and preserved by an organization called BCwPA, where they can be studied and referenced by other naturalists.The club’s first tenet, “Be watchful, be curious, be scrawling,” is often etched on the first page of the oldest volumes. 

Not too long after its founding, the organization began to grow excited about animals you would call cryptids; creatures so strange and rare that many were believed to have never even existed at all. While all living things were earnestly studied, a game developed on the side, slowly infiltrating each journal. Called “Muddy Waters”, members would seek out stories of beasts and beings not proven to exist. They would then slyly include them in their otherwise straightforward records. There were a few rules to the game, though. First, to play, one had to do diligent research. Stories and sightings of the creature must be thoroughly documented and collected. Then, the areas where it was encountered must be searched and studied for any signs of life, past or present. If the individual felt they had enough evidence to disprove or deny the creature’s existence, it was fair game for Muddy Waters. 

Based on what the naturalist learned, and confined to the statements and descriptions of witnesses, club members created realistic fictional field studies complete with notes and data like any other entry. From behavior and internal anatomy to sensory details and ecological concerns, the goal was to create a case for the animal that was so compelling that others believed it. In good fun, players of Muddy Waters knew that as other naturalists revisited others’ research, they would eventually come to the truth. Yet, with more eyes in these areas of strange occurrence, if there truly was anything out there, someone was more likely to find it - and, more excitingly, proof. 

Over generations, BCwPA documented new species, watched the end of others, and learned much about the life found all around them. Shockingly, they found that cases of new cryptids were on the rise - independent of their self-contained journaling game. Not just cases of misidentification, displacement, or originating from strange, ingested substances, but extinction. Once mundane creatures were growing rarer and rarer over time as pollution, habitat destruction, and other unnecessary, unnatural events overwhelmed them. In just a few generations, known animals became cryptids, their appearances and sounds and smells and lives alien, sometimes frightening, and usually exaggerated in recollection. Saddened by the pattern, BCwPA began seeking ways to help prevent these sorts of cryptids from developing. Thus came into being the second tenet: “Be cryptid, be kind,” meaning, be respectful and considerate of the life around you. Reduce harm. Leave so little of an impact on the wild that you may as well be a cryptid to it.

Hiding and keeping to themselves, the members, or ‘agents’, of BCWPA are cryptids themselves. The organization was founded by a group of medium-sized creatures known as Ballyravens. A type of fae called a pwca (pronounced poo-kuh), Ballyravens are bird-headed humanoids that can shapeshift into various forms, but not without limits. Like all life, Ballyravens are not a monolith and cannot be accurately defined in a few sentences. However, those tied to BCwPA are unique, gathered together by similar interests and ideals. BCWPA - the Ballyraven Cryptid Wildlife Protection Agency - is an anagram of pwca with a B at the beginning for Ballyraven and the first word of each of the club’s tenets. Upon joining the club, each new member is issued a field journal. As the group grew, they separated into six smaller teams with similar interests, of which they adventured and journaled alongside. Generally curious beings, BCwPA Ballyravens love to learn about any organism - common or rare, living or long-extinct, real or imaginary or unknown. 

As a rule, fae rarely directly interact with humans. BCwPA is now an exception. You are able to come across this broadcast as members have decided to welcome you into the organization. The BCwPA archives are being translated for your enjoyment and learning; in exchange, we ask for you to consider becoming one of us. You can help keep an eye out for cryptids in your area, so none go unknown,sharing stories of the strange and unknown. You can contribute your observations of life, so that we may all learn and discover together. You are invited to play Muddy Waters to keep us all on our toes and our minds open. Lastly, your help brings us to the third and final tenet, “Be a BCwPA agent”: a call to educate others and promote being curious, being kind, and being a friend of nature.

Online, we’ll go entry by entry into what we’ve found in the world, sharing all of the research and stories we’ve collected, and the results of our investigations. Each subject will be broken down into three parts: the Witness: the myths, encounters, and stories of an undocumented organism; the Investigation, an attempt to find possible explanations of what was experienced; the Life, a muddy water field excursion.

You can support BCWPA’s educational efforts and projects by visiting the Ballyraven store on Etsy or by joining the BCwPA Naturalist Club for free through the Ballyraven Patreon and Discord. In our community, you can share your personal field journal additions, questions, and thoughts with others, receive feedback, and learn more about journaling the natural (and unnatural) world for free. BCwPA also takes membership fees on Patreon for access to BCwPA Teams; teams receive Ballyraven artwork every two months, along with other perks.

To find out more, and read the Ballyraven archives and listen to the BCwPA podcast.