Critically Endangered
These are the only species in their genus, and the largest of their family. They are quite big, about 40 inches tall. Mostly they are found in Cambodia, some may be in Vietnam, and a few in Laos. Unfortunately in Thailand they have been extirpated. One site I saw said they are the most endangered bird in the world. I'm not sure that is true, but they are quite possibly in the top 20 at least. They have at most 100 breeding pairs, but that may be optimistic. Poaching has apparently increased considerably since Covid has hit. Desperate people usually don't care that a species is nearing extinction when they are very hungry. I don't understand why anyone would poison something they were intending to eat. I wouldn't like to eat anything I knew had just recently ingested poison. That just happened in April though, 3 birds were poisoned intentionally and the plan was to either eat them or sell them for their meat. When you have fewer than 200, the death of 3 makes a rather large dent in population, especially in the potential numbers you might have. Droughts, purposeful draining of swamps, hunting, obviously poisoning, and predators eating their eggs are the problems they are facing.
Since it is a leap year, halfway through the year is 183 days instead of 182.5. Depending on how much I get done today on the last of the presents I'm working on, I may do a special painting tomorrow as well as on Wednesday. I'm not sure, we will see how things go. I finally got the presents mailed out to my wrong text friend. This is a painting I did a while ago of his dog. It was before I got some of my good pencils and I'd honestly like to re-do it, but his dog just died so I wanted to get it to him. In the painting, I tried to imagine the dog as he would look before he lived to a ripe old age.
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