Avimanders of the Ocean Age

Avimanders are a branch of the ornimorphs in the broader metamorph bird clade. These strange and usually very small neotenic birds mature at an earlier life stage than the squaves do and so exhibit halted development - legs develop at adulthood, but the skin remains permeable and the animal is tied to the water throughout life. Though some do develop a single lung, allowing them to gulp atmospheric to breathe and so to survive in stagnant pools, all of them still respire mainly through their skin. To increase their surface area and therefore the efficiency of the process their skin is frequently covered in abundant hair-like cilia, particularly on the underside, along the arms and around the neck, which function almost as gills to passively absorb oxygen from the water column. This allows them to spend their entire lives underwater, where the first representatives of this lineage most often occurred in freshwater ponds and streams. Species like the riverrunners, no longer than a man's finger, still dwell in remaining inland streams, sheltering from the current beneath rocks by day and clinging to the stony substrate by night with their hooked forearms and foraging for small fish and invertebrate prey. Specialized to endure severe cold, riverrunners can even survive freezing solid in the winter only to revive unharmed in the spring. But since the ocean age, other avimanders that require less severe temperature swings have moved into saltwater, where they have evolved into strange and specialist ambush hunters. 

Grasping onto weedy sea vegetation with their long hind toes, oceanic species such as the six inch long sinister salamantis hide in plain sight, often relying on their thick 'hair' to break up their outlines, ambush and snatch prey in mantis-like clawed forearms. A related group known as the fanfingers, all of which are less than three inches long, have subsequently adapted to utilize especially small food sources and specializes their forearms into brushes of fine hairs used to filter food particles from the water. Unlike the aquamorphs which adapted their ear canals into a gill to pump water, all avimanders retain full function of the ear. To be most useful at sensing vibration underwater however, the ear drum is now external, giving these animals a frog-like ear visible on the side of the head. 

Typical for metamorph birds with aquatic larvae, avimanders broadcast-spawn, distributing their eggs in the water and abandoning them to their fate. Their larvae, which are primarily carnivorous like the adults, closely resemble tadpoles.