Gigaducks

Gigaducks are a clade of small (less than a ton in weight) serestriders with strong semi-aquatic tendencies. Their feet are webbed and their legs fairly short, while the neck remains long - no longer to browse, however, but to feed on aquatic vegetation. They are highly buoyant and able to float along the surface of the water like a boat, dipping their heads beneath the surface as they paddle along to grasp at water plants as far as ten feet down. Gigaducks inhabit a wide variety of habitats including both freshwater and oceanic water sources wherever food can be found, though they are rarely found far from shore as they are unable to reach food sources beyond the longest extent of their neck as they are too buoyant to fully submerge under the water or dive. Nonetheless, gigaducks are the only serestriders by 100 million years hence to have reached the eastern hemisphere, likely by island hopping along the northern coastlines. Today they can be found over a very wide distribution along sea coasts and large freshwater river systems almost worldwide.

Gigaducks are notable among serestriders for the degree of care they provide to their young. Though they ancestrally lost their parental instinct, and still do not actively incubate their own eggs, a redevelopment of parental care has appeared. Females build large mounds of soil and rotting vegetation near water in which to lay their eggs and guard these nests for the duration of incubation, a period of several months. When the chicks hatch she will continue to guard them for as long as six months, though the chicks must feed themselves from birth. Because of their far smaller size they must forage in water that is far too shallow for their mother to easily forage for enough food to sustain her, meaning that initially a mother gigaduck must spend most of her time on land or just along the water's edge to protect her young ones, largely foregoing her own needs to ensure they are safe. Only when her young are full and grow weary will she then move away from shore to graze a little herself in deeper waters until they become hungry again, taking her chicks along for a ride on her back. So strong is a mother serestrider's drive to protect her young that females will readily adopt wayward young of other broods and even share parental responsibility with other nesting females on the same water source, occasionally resulting in mothers with several chicks of obviously different ages all following her in tow.

above: a mother gigaduck browses on sea bamboo while several young chicks rest on her back.