Critically Endangered
Around the World in 80 Days - Day 8 - Saudi Arabia
We are sailing from Suez down to Aden in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is on our left, so while these birds are mostly now extinct from Saudi Arabia, and they also have other countries in the area as part of their range, I felt like painting them today. I had been going to paint a coral. A site I used to try and find which animals to use for each day, had listed three corals as critically endangered, and I was thinking it might be interesting to do several different corals. In doing the research for painting today, I realized that in spite of what the one site said (and actually a second one as well), none of the corals were critically endangered. So, we have this bird instead. They are a migratory bird, breeding in Russia and Kazakhstan, then heading down to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, and other areas. They are critically endangered, but nobody seems to really know why their populations plummeted from 1930 into the late 1980's, down to not even a third of their past numbers. They are expected to continue to have severe population declines, with possibly even an 80% decline in 27 years. They have a summer and winter look, with this being their summer fashion. In the winter, they are more brown, and their belly is white instead of black.
Whew, I'm tired. Last night, I was so proud of myself. I got to bed early because the blind terrier has been deciding that bedtime is around 9:00pm. I'm normally a 1:00-2:00am sort of person. I have to get up when he does though, so that means I'm up again by 5:45am and that means I am really tired, always. So, I'm starting to get him into bed and then get myself ready for bed as soon as he has decided he's done for the day. Well last night, he had a treat that apparently did not sit well with him. He woke me up at 1:00 in the morning and again at 5:00. When he got me up at 1:00am he spent a good deal of time outside. When I wake up, I take quite a while to be able to fall back to sleep, so this meant I got almost no sleep. Poor little guy, he's been blind for a little over a year now and still isn't at all confident about things. He and our other dog are so weird, but I love them and all their weirdness.
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