Stormshadow

A massive flying seraph, the carnivorous stormshadow exploits rough weather to find easy prey.

The hothouse world is one of unstable weather patterns that often produce immense cyclones. Forming over the warm oceans, these storm build in strength and leave destruction in their wake as they move inland over coastal regions, downing forests and causing strong storm surges and widespread flooding.  For many animals these storms are deadly, expelling them from their homes if they survive at all. But for some, able to avoid the worst of it themselves, these storms can be useful.

Stormshadows are huge descendants of the aukvulture which are specialized to trail hurricanes and take advantage of the small animals left displaced in their wake. They are drawn to the rising currents of warm air during the formation of these oceanic tempests, riding them up to incredible heights of 20,000 feet. They then take advantage of the side winds coming from the storm during instead of tail winds, so that they are pushed away from the advancing cyclone and can trail behind it on its updrafts instead of being pushed in front where they could be battered and knocked from the sky by gale-force winds. Once behind the storm at at high altitude, they follow the storm as it moves inland, often having gathered in flocks of several dozen which circle the sky together. With wingspans in excess of 35 feet and a height of over twelve feet, they are the largest flying bird to evolve since the extinction of the stormsonor and in some ways resemble it. Yet these birds are predators, dropping from the sky behind the weather systems as they make landfall and probing through the debris to catch disoriented small animals such as molodonts, seraphs, and skuorc chicks as well as to feed on larger animals, such as thorngrazers, that have died in the storm.

Morphologically similar to their ancestor, albeit larger and longer, the stormshadow is still classified in the aukvulture genus in contrast to the two other contemporary giant descendants, the great-crested drakevulture and the awegull. It remains the most ocean-associated of them all, even as a primarily terrestrial forager, due to its affiliation with cyclones. Its range is unsurprisingly restricted to sea coasts where these storms are most common with inland movements rare and brief, usually only used to escape storms that they are unable to get above or behind. Nesting occurs in colonies on completely barren beaches, as any sort of cover - which might be presumed to help shelter them from storms during the period where their pupating young cannot be moved - actually can be more dangerous during storms than simply hunkering down together in the open. Monogamous adults take turns foraging for food and trailing the storms while their partner stays brooding the single chick, with the colony working together to face the weather when it becomes volatile, huddling tight together and collectively helping shield one another from the strong winds. Chicks can fly shortly after hatching yet, unlike most aukvulture species, they remain at the colony for several months, where they can be better protected against the weather than they could if they flew more widely with just their own parent to shield them. Only once they are larger and stronger do they begin to fly longer distances with the adults, but they will not be old enough to chase the cyclones until they are nearly adult, and so remain dependent on their parents for at least some of their food for as long as three years.

When storms are not favorable, stormshadows are adaptable and will seek food in other ways. They are able to wade and catch fish, especially in tidal pools, as well as to collectively drive small animals from tall grass and snatch them up in their long jaws. Scavenging is also a viable supplementary strategy, and the scent of a large carcass several miles inland may draw them away from the sea to take advantage; their huge size lets them individually take over kills from virtually any other land or sky predator except the awegull, which though smaller is stronger and more fearsome, and outmatches the stormshadow one on one - and usually hunts in pairs, to boot. As they are the most gregarious of the big three aukvulture species however, they can sometimes displace it by working together as an even larger group. Though generally non-aggressive except to animals small enough to swallow whole, and much more peaceful than their stronger-jawed, megafauna-hunting relatives, stormshadows can still easily threaten rivals with loud, low calls and intimidating snaps of their serrated beaks, and gain confidence when accompanied by peers that they may lack alone.