The Boarbird

Omnivorous and carnivorous diets have now evolved independently in several viva lineages. In addition to the primitive ancestor of banshees which first adopted predatory leanings, a group of serilopes, in order to survive in the harsh polar wastes, have since also developed generalist tendencies. Directly descended from the canaribou (which itself is still extant) the Boarbird hunts the northern taiga and tundra region of Striata, eating almost anything it comes across. Whereas the boarbird's ancestor ate mainly lichens and pine needles, the boarbird now favors meaty food, chasing down smaller birds, searching out carrion with a keen sense of smell and also digging up tubers and gorging on seasonal gluts of seeds and fruit in the short arctic summer, only relegating itself to grazing when other food is in short supply. The canaribou's small bill tusks have become tooth-like projections in the boarbird, useful to cut and dismember meat from carcass and dispatch small animals. Its stomach remains chambered but shows signs of a reduction in complexity, shorter than those of other serilope and the chambers smaller and less well-defined, while the grinding plates on the front of its tongue have become sharper and pointed, in convergence with the banshee, as a bone-stripping tool.

above: as spring thaws the tundra, an opportunistic boarbird feeds on carrion, perhaps a canaribou calf that has not survived the winter.

~~~

The boarbird is smaller than its ancestor, lighter and leaner, and is solitary. Its wings are almost vestigial and of no practical use, with the spurs but a tiny claw and the primary feathers just a few wispy tufts. Rather interestingly, northern populations of boarbird still associate closely with canaribou herds, picking off weak and ailing young and feeding on voided eggshell fragments after chicks are born, which are frequently still well-vascularized with blood vessels and edible tissue. The most likely origin for the boarbird is that a group of canaribou, facing a particular harsh string of winters, may have been forced to feed on their weaker fellows that succumbed to the cold in order to survive when plant food was unattainable. Eventually, as the population became distinct, predation upon one another' living young may have been the next step, resulting in the solitary behavior of the modern boarbird, which retains cannibalistic tendencies towards offspring other than its own. To get by in one of the harshest of all biomes requires complete adaptability, sometimes to a very extreme extent, if a creature is to survive.