In this section are copies of original works of art. All of them are
dedicated to helping us live according to unconditional love and compassion,
which is the foundation of our peaceful means of bringing true and lasting peace
to all of God's creatures, whether they are human beings or other animals.
(Artwork - 044)
Great Cormorant
(Phalacrocorax carbo lucidus)
The Great Cormorant is found throughout most of the eastern hemisphere,
including parts of Greenland, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. They have
crossed the North Atlantic Ocean to colonize the northeast coast of North
America (in winter they have reached as far south as Florida, but normally
don’t breed south of about Nova Scotia or Maine), but probably only did that
recently (within the last few thousand years) because the birds found in
North America are the exact same subspecies as the one found along the
northern cost of Europe, the nominate race. (Great Cormorants like both
fresh and salt water, so I predict that within a few centuries they will
make their way inland, in North America, to the Great Lakes, and possibly
will reach the interior lakes of the northern prairies, and possibly the
great inland sea known as Hudson Bay…but not in my lifetime.
A few isolated individuals have been spotted in Lake Ontario, however, so
far as I know there is no evidence of them breeding in fresh water in North
America…yet.) But the species has diverged into a number of subspecies, some
quite distinctive. Here I have shown a bird of the race found in southern
Africa, Phalacrocorax carbo lucidus, sometimes called the White-breasted
Cormorant. This portrait shows a bird in non-breeding plumage, and is done
with gouache watercolours on paper, with a little colour pencil added.
Adults in breeding plumage are more crisply black and white.
Please read
Why People Kill Cormorants.
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Art by Barry Kent MacKay |
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