Royal Penguin,watercolor painting birds

To see how warm the climate is I went to the garden center late autumn this year and bought seedlings of flowers that thrive in the heat of spring or summer.  Now we are in the mid of winter, I have flowering poppies, pansies, lobelia, verbena and further in my own garden, flowering scarlet bougainvillea, impatient, rosemary, pine apple sage.. the lot.  Our climate has changed.  Antarctic is getting warmer .. every day!  there are researches into the deep sea of the south pacific on the effect of global warming..  I thought of the very special creature that hold my thought as I pick up the brush and let my mind wander...  The Royal Penguin!

The Ocean is Fun! Wonderful Antarctic Sea Bird Painting, 
Watercolor on paper 10"x12"

The royal penguin (Eudyptes schlegeli) is a species of penguin, which can be found on the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island and adjacent islands. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the royal penguin as vulnerable.  The scientific name commemorates the German zoologist Hermann Schlegel.

Royal penguins as a species are classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN, with high risk of endangerment in the wild.  Historically they were hunted for their oil; between 1870 and 1919 the government of Tasmania issuing licences for hunting them, with an average of 150,000 penguins (both royal and king) being taken each year. At the peak of the industry in 1905, the plant established on Macquarie Island was processing 2000 penguins at a time, with each penguin yielding about half a litre of oil.  Since the end of penguin hunting on Macquarie the numbers have climbed to 850,000 pairs. Before hunting started, there were three million penguins on the island (both royal and king)

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