Gannet Birds - A Mated Pair - coloring page

Welcome to my free coloring pages blog.

Today's second post is here and it is of the large sea-bird called a Gannet.

 This may be my last post for a while.  

We are about to move out of our rental house and because of construction delays our new home will not be completed for a few weeks yet.  Technically the home will belong to our daughter and her husband and we get the walk-in basement apartment.  

So we are going to visit and stay with family members here in Utah, in Wyoming, and in Nevada.  

Technically we will be homeless... but not in a desperate situation.   

If we can get connected to the internet and use our relatives' computer scanner/printer then we can post on this blog.  But we have no guarantee that we will be able to do that.  

I will definitely be posting again when we are in our new house sometime in late August or early September.  I apologize for the break in my posts.  

Gannets - Mated Pair

Gannets are very large seabirds with a wingspan of around 6.6 feet or about 2 meters.  Gannets will dive from a high height into the ocean after prey like squid and fish.  Blue-footed Boobies do this too.  We observed it in the Galapagos Islands.  The Northern Gannet is the largest seabird in the North Atlantic.  They are mostly white with yellowish heads.  

Gannets mate for life but live separately between mating seasons until they meet and get reacquainted at the "gannetry."  That is the name for the breeding colony.  A large gannetry may have thousands of breeding pairs of Gannets.  

NOTE:  This drawing, in printable form, can be found by clicking on the button labeled Birds or Animals.  Then scroll down because the new drawings are at the bottom of the lists.  

Swan Mother with Cygnets and the Ugly Duckling

Welcome to my free coloring pages blog. 

Today there are two new drawings and one will be posted here and another on the next post. 

This post's drawing is of one of my favorite birds... the swan. 

 Swan Mother with Cygnets

(& the Ugly Duckling)

Swans mate for life.  The male swan will even help incubate the eggs.  This drawing shows a mother swan with her cygnets and a young cygnet... who may be lost and seems to be playing the role of The Ugly Duckling.  

The Ugly Duckling is a great fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.  It is a story that hits home to many of us who were bullied as children.  The Ugly Duckling hatches from an egg that somehow ended up in the nest of a duck.  He is rejected and etc. but eventually finds out that he is a swan... the most beautiful of all birds.  In the Disney cartoon version of the story the Ugly Duckling is adopted by a kind mother swan... or maybe she is his mother to begin with.  

NOTE:  The neck of an adult swan is actually a bit thinner than the neck is portrayed in this drawing. I drew her this way to facilitate coloring by children.  This drawing can be found, in printable form, under the Animals and Birds button.  Scroll to the bottom of the drop-down menu because new drawings are at the bottom of the lists.  

Anatotitan or Edmontosaurus coloring pages

 Welcome to my free coloring pages blog.

Today's new drawing is of a duckbill dinosaur named Anatotitan.

Anatotitan and Pternodon

(New drawing) 

Anatotitan is the name given to a very large duck-billed dinosaur or Hadrosaur from the very end of the Late Cretaceous Period.  It lived in North America.  It was at least 39 feet long and maybe up to 49 feet long.  That would be 12 and 15 meters.  

New research by two Paleontologists (Campione and Evans) suggests that Anatotitan was just a fully grown species of Edmontosaurus.  It would have been a prey species for the huge predatory Theropod dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.  Anatotitan... or Edmontosaurus was a Hadrosaur with a flat head and the classic duck-like mouth... hence the name duck-billed dinosaur.  

Below is a drawing of Edmontosaurus from a previous post.  It includes a closer view of Pteranodon. 

Pteranodon was a genus of fairly common toothless Pterosaurs that lived in North America during the Late Cretaceous Period.  It had a wingspan of up to 23 feet or 7 meters.  It ate fish.  Pteranoson fossils have been found in several Western states of North America.  

Edmontosaurus and Pteranodon

(Older drawing)

Edmontosaurus vs T. rex size comparison

This older drawing shows that T. rex was huge but Edmontosaurus which was possibly also Anatotitan, was even longer than Tyrannosaurus rex.  There is some evidence that Anatotitan / Edmontosaurus had a less flat snout than previously thouight.  

(Older drawing) 

NOTE:  These drawings can be found, in printable form, by clicking on the "Paleontology" button up at the top of this page.  Then scroll down to the bottom to get to the new drawing.  The older drawings will be further up the list.  New drawings are always at the bottom of the printables lists.