Scrabbleskua

A cliffside hunter of tribbfisher nesting colonies, the sneaky scrabbleskua makes a living stealing other creatures' young.

Burdles and gupgop snarks may have been the first animals to raft from a northern landmass to Serinaustra after the end of the ice age, but they were not the last. A quarter million years into the beginning of the  hothouse age, the skuorc reached the southern world too, through a combination of hopping flooding equatorial islands and small juveniles transported on floating vegetation rafts pushed along by by favorable winds. A small, generalist omnivore  somewhere between an opossum and an alligator, skuorcs had evolved in  the ice age to find food washed ashore along the beaches of the rich  ocean age seas. These quadrupedal metamorph birds - descendants of the ornimorphs which had long ago lost their flighted adult life stage - ate fish, carrion, crustaceans and even seaweed, waddling along the sand. Often they swam considerable distances with their powerful propulsive tail, a relic of their ancestry as metamorph birds that once had aquatic tadpole-like larvae. As the only species of squotter to survive the end of the ice age, this long, fully flexibile tail is now a unique trait; no other group of terrestrial birds has one.

The scrabbleskua is a skuorc that has adapted to life on Serinaustra's coasts, where it has become a somewhat specialized predator and scavenger of bird and tribbfisher nesting colonies. Webbing between the skuorc's toes has been lost to time in these species, which swim little and instead are nimble climbers, living in the cracks and crannies of seaside cliffs on which their prey raise their young. Using their tails to balance and strong hooked claws to find purchase on the slippery rocky substrate, these muscular 20 lb animals, which resemble a cross between a large lizard and a vulture, skulk along and snatch unguarded babies and clean up the carcasses of those who have succumbed to the elements, disease, or starvation. Armored scutes once restricted to the face have spread over all of the extremities, while feathers less needed for warmth become sparser everywhere except the back, where they have become hard and thick like hair combs. These almost plate-like dorsal plumes now serve a defensive role, protecting the animal from the bites of defensive animals as it sprints through the colony to snatch its prey and makes a getaway back down the vertical cliffs to eat in privacy.

Animals that rely on fishing these coastal habitats toward the equator can breed throughout the year on account of consistent oceanic conditions year round, even if day length may change. Different species do, however, follow their own calendars that mainly focus on synchronizing the fledging of their young all around the same time to overwhelm predators with choice and ensure the survival of most. But fledging occurs at different times across the many different species, depending on their growth rate and when they begin breeding, and so this allows the scrabbleskua an almost year-round food source. Though it hunts young tribbfishers at any stage, fledging periods, when the young tribbfishers are left by their mothers and must fly off the cliffs on their own for the first time, are when the scrabbleskua can gorge. A not insignificant number of fledglings crash on the rocks and beaches below, where these opportunistic enemies gather in numbers to grab them as they hit the ground. 

These animals are semi-social, for they find greater hunting success mobbing the colony in small groups than any one individual does by itself. Parents have a hard time watching all of them at once, and as one distracts a frantic parent another may succeed in taking its young. They don't have a concept of sharing however, and as soon as one gets its prize it retreats, with the group arguing over the spoils and often tearing their victims apart limb from limb in gluttonous frenzy to get a part. When the nesting grounds are sparser and this prey is less abundant, the scrabbleskuas will spend more time searching for refuse along the seashore, splitting up and individually seeking out carrion and small seaside prey.