Snuffles

Though the most impressive, the ancestors of elefinches were not the only of the Kyran Islands' nocturnal burrowing canaries to survive the early Thermocene asteroid impact event. The numerous members of this lineage were all among the most fortunate of the islands' wildlife, for by sheltering below ground in their dens, many were saved from the most damaging shock waves. (though of course, those whose burrows unfortunately lay directly at the site of impact were to be not so lucky.)

As the islands' ecosystem recovered, some of the soft-snouted burrowing birds gradually abandoned their nocturnal way of life, giving rise to the elefinches. Others, however, changed far less in the same time.

Snuffles are six species of small to medium-sized nocturnal birds, in some respects superficially resembling shaggy brown ducks but entirely without wings and with long digging claws on the hind legs, which have changed very little from the ancestral form of the elefinch. They diverged between thirty and forty million years PE, sometime after the evolution of a sensitive fleshy snout but before the lineage evolved musculature to support a mobile nose. All living species are still active only at night and dig large underground dens in which they raise their young and roost during the day. Their eyes are very small and they are nearly blind, and the face still supports long bristle-like whiskers to serve as guides and keep their owner from bumbling into obstacles. Like the ancestors of the elefinch, they leave their burrows after sunset in small groups to root around in the mud and the leaf litter with their wide shovel-shaped bills, feeding on earthworms, crickets, beetle larvae, and whatever fallen fruits and seeds they stumble across. Snuffles' nostrils, like those of elefinches, are situated at the very end of their bills and they find their food through a combination of scent and touch as they "snuffle" otherwise quite blindly through the dark understory of the Kyrans' rainforests.

above: a family group of lesser snuffles, each about as large as a white domestic duck, forage for food in a forest clearing. Normally feeding in complete darkness, here they find themselves bathed in a beam of cool blue light emanating from the large gas planet which Serina orbits.

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The largest snuffle is also the most herbivorous and feeds significantly on fallen fruit; it can grow as large as a medium-sized dog, as much as forty pounds in weight, and produces burrows which would be wide enough to accommodate the entrance of an adult human being. The smallest snuffle, on the other hand, grows to only about four pounds - the size of a months-old kitten - and eats almost exclusively invertebrates. Most other species range from ten to twenty pounds in size and are generalists with varied diets, feeding on anything organic they find while rooting in the dirt.

Snuffles are more intelligent and exhibit more complex social lives than might be expected. They mate for life and rear clutches of two to four eggs in underground nests. Both partners maintain the den, incubate the eggs, and feed the young for the first few weeks until they are able to leave the nest. Though snuffles begin foraging for food at one month of age, they stay with their parents for as long as eight months and in some species will often even remain in their natal groups after the next season's eggs are laid, assisting in rearing their younger siblings until they decide to venture off and begin their own families sometime in their second year.

The Water Snuffle

Another surviving group of burrowing soft-billed birds, somewhat closer down the line to the true elefinches but nonetheless still separated by nearly 75 million years of evolution, are two species of especially interesting aquatic birds known as water-snuffles. Though not truly allied with their land-living distant relatives of the same moniker, having diverged at least thirty million years later, they are broadly similar in their basic form; small eyes, sensitive whiskers, and acute sense of smell, differing more in their habits: water-snuffles, as their name suggests, are adapted to find food underwater and have become excellent swimmers, with their hind legs situated at the end of their bodies and evolved into large paddles. The nostrils are born on short extendible stalks, akin to the earliest trunks of the elefinches but likely independently developed; they serve to allow the animal to surface and breathe without fully emersing its head.

Water-snuffles exhibit the same mobile snouts and a fan of finger-like fleshy appendages at the tip as the early elefinches, having diverged later than the terrestrial snuffles. As in their ancestors, these improve their sensitivity to hidden prey buried in the mud and are able to feel around to detect buried prey items which, once discovered, are quickly gulped down whole; even the shells of armored molluscs are broken down in the gizzard through the aid of gastroliths. Water-snuffles still rest and raise their young in burrows, and retain sharp claws with which to dig them, usually dug into a riverbank and opening only underwater to protect them from terrestrial predators. Propelling themselves with large webbed feet and digging out worms and shellfish from the sediment at the bottoms of the Kyran's freshwater rivers and lakes, the water-snuffles have evolved into something very much like a truly avian analog to Earth's platypus.

above: a least water-snuffle weaves its way through a vegetated stream.

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The two living species, the least and the greater water-snuffle, are distinguished mainly by their preferred habitats. The more abundant least water-snuffle, an animal around the size of a mallard, is most often found in slow-moving ponds and streams choked with water plants. Its eyes are small and it feeds on a wide variety of aquatic insects and crustaceans as well as molluscs, which it is particularly adapted to handle with a wide gape and large, muscular gizzard. Greater water-snuffles, which are marginally larger, prefer fast-flowing, clear bodies of water and feed mainly on benthic fishes and crustaceans such as shrimp, both of which are usually pursued rather than dug out from the sediment. Their eyesight is thus better than that of the lesser species and the tendrils on the snout are shorter and thicker.