Life of the Meridians: Flightless Sparrowgulls
(and one that flies.)

This guest entry was written and illustrated by Troll Man

~~~

Over the last million years, Serina has undergone drastic changes to its global biosphere at a rate not seen since armageddon, or the Thermocene-Pangeacene mass extinction. With the halting of tectonic activity, so too has the moon's geothermal heating come to an end. From the ends of the world, vast ice sheets over a mile thick spread over millions of square kilometres. This has created a completely upheaval of floral biota across the face of this world; woodland and taiga habitats have faded into history, spoken of only in legend, of better, more fertile ages. No living animal has now ever known of a reality where plants climbed high into the sky in densities thick enough to blot out the sun.

Even on the equatorial lands of the Meridians, this description holds true. In less than a hundred-thousand years, the climate has turned from balmy, to temperate, to sub-polar. Where once lands were covered by dense evergreens only a few tens of millennia ago, now grassy tundra, shrub-land, and steppe replace them. Centuries of frigid gales wore away at the ancient forests bit by bit until nothing remained, blowing down any saplings before they could mature to propagate. Only here and there, the occasional sight of stunted trees erupting from the endless fields of green, those hardy few capable of surviving from germination long enough to brace themselves against the constant freezing squalls, but gnarled and curved into strange forms by endless torrential winds.

Because of its equatorial position, day length doesn't vary much over the year's length, but the archipelago nevertheless experiences the brunt of winter every single day when the sun dips beneath the horizon. Without the heat of its life-giving star, the lands are subject to the full force of the freezing squalls. In less than twelve hours, temperatures can drop from 20 centigrade to nearly thirty below zero from noon to night, with periodic winds of over a hundred kilometres an hour. Regular storms, the dissipating fingers of immense continental blizzards from across the ocean, also lash the Meridians, with sleet and freezing rain pelting the lands. When these storms pour through the night, the freezing darkness lasts into the day. Conditions are virtually unsurvivable to any land animal caught out in the open.

On the Meridians, seasons last not months, but hours, and even the hardiest trees of the Meridian must occasionally yield to the unrelenting eternal chill as summer passes into winter every single day, without end. Even as the last yellowed leaves fall from an old and withered once evergreen, its crooked, windswept body will continue to stand for far longer. As the falling sun colours the sky orange, the inhabitants of the northern steppe once more begin the twilight migration towards the valleys where they'll be sheltered from the icy gales for the night.

~~~

Gadawing (Gladiopterus luteocephalus): One of the largest of the terrestrial sparrowgulls, adult males may reach nearly sixty kilograms and over five feet tall (females tend to be about three-quarters the size of males). They are only slightly shorter on average than the closely related pitpockets, but reach the same average weight. As close relatives of the pitpockets, they follow a similar social structure, with larger and more colourful males protecting harems of females, or groups of bachelor males unable to secure their own harems. However, the gadawing has evolved further defensive measures with a hard bony growth and sharp, keratinous spur on its wrist joint. When threatened by a predator or rival, he will not hesitate to attack viciously with his wings and feet, leaping and aiming for more vulnerable body parts like the neck or eyes. Attacks from a bird of such size can cause tremendous damage, particularly from its hardened wing spikes (which can be over three inches long); heated infraspecific fights between overzealous males often result in deep lacerations or broken bones, and older shadowstalkers often bare faded scarring from failed hunting attempts on adult gadawings from younger and more inexperienced days. Females possess a reduced version of this structure, although usually flee rather than fight unless absolutely forced to. This is particularly true during brooding, as females have little way to both hold eggs and defend themselves, although as a last resort they may drop their eggs to both lose weight and distract a pursuing predator; you can always lay more eggs. The slasheratus present much less of a threat than the much larger shadowstalkers, as the gadawings usually cluster together against their mobs rather than run, recognizing their advantage in strength and numbers.

During warmer days in its evolutionary history, the gadawing was a mixed browser and grazer (but supplementing its diet with insects and other small animals), but as forests have been decimated over several millennia by drastic global cooling, they have become predominantly grazing, browsing only from lower growing shrubs which rarely grow taller than they are. Any trees that survive in this new climate never grow high enough or in great enough density to form groves. This change in ecological feeding needed to happen rapidly, relatively speaking, as normal environmental overturns such as these tend to occur over hundreds of millennia, not barely more than ten millennia. Some specialized browsing sparrowgull species have not fared as well and declined into obscure extinction, and in a story told again and again, species like the gadawing and pitpocket survive these changes through their adaptable diet and lifestyle. They're hardy enough to survive the nightly chill and mobile enough to survive the encroachment of numerous invasive species. During the times when snow blankets the vegetation, they often migrate down to the coast to feed on scrubbier beach grass or seaweed that washes up, which is rarely ever in short supply. Herds of the two species often intermingle in their nomadic travels across the lands, and in rare occasions may even hybridize to produce young.

Turdukual (Galloanasoides aedifex): A more primitive member of the insular sparrowgulls; this turkey-sized species has not developed methods of moving its eggs, but has instead doubled-down on nest construction, with elaborate colonial weavings constructed of grass, sticks, and soil, making them completely camouflaged and resembling little more than a mound of mossy dirt or an in-descriptive shrub. Over time, grass and moss accumulates over top the domes, completing the disguise completely. Dozens of these constructions clustered in close proximation may be located in plain sight on the forest floor, forming little hidden towns of the squat, gamefowl-like avians sometimes encompassing hundreds of square feet. These towns have a marked social orientation; more dominant individuals in the pecking order cluster closer to a "centre", with lower ranking birds having nests closer to the outside of a determined radius and usually more widely spaced apart. Dominant breeding pairs in a flock often have nests clustered into communal breeding mounds formed by several nesting mounds fused together. With no visual markers to determine where their nests are located, the birds must rely on their memory alone to determine their location when they go off to forage.

Towns are constructed on hillier regions to prevent the nests from being flooded in the spring or during heavier rains, and pair-bonds will share a nest. Females will move into the homes of males once they establish a partnership, which deliberately construct their nests as bachelors to be larger than necessary to accommodate future potential partners and their chicks. As extremely social animals, turdukuals are cooperative breeders, with children from previous broods, adult siblings, and even neighbours assisting in care of offspring, which enter freely into the nests of unrelated individuals once they become mobile enough. As juveniles, turdukuals will practice the art of nest-building by construction of numerous crude and usually uninhabitable stick domes to hone their skills, as the construction of a well-disguised and well-insulated home can mean life or death as an adult. The species is very long-lived, with lifespans sometimes exceeding fifty years, and taking up to four years to reach sexual maturity and usually a few years longer before they actually reproduce.

Aside from safety against predators, these are vital for surviving the chill of the night, without the dense tree cover they once could have relied upon to shelter from the worst of the cold. Without regular seasons, temperature fluctuations at the equator and severe and sudden. When the sun sets on the Meridians, the normally hospitable weather drops within an hour or two to subzero, turning from summer to winter in an instance. In particularly rough weather, storms of freezing rain may last for days at a time, the remnants of huge blizzards from across the sea. Although they can't strictly hibernate, they can enter a stage of torpor for a few days inside their huts during the harshest periods to conserve their body temperature if needed. Turdukuals will construct nests not meant for living in as communal larders to stockpile seeds and grasses in the periods when ice and snow cover up the land and make foraging too difficult, although these tend to be prone to kleptoparasites so generally at least one sparrowgull has to periodically guard the storehouses to prevent other birds or molodonts from swiping their food. Separation of their food stores into multiple different larder nests also decreases the overall losses from thieves, rot, or bad weather.

Puffbird (Arcosphaera cochleavenator): One of the smallest flightless sparrowgulls, weighing in at only about one pound as adults, this diminutive species is part of a lineage which likely filled the niches that are occupied by the molodonts on the mainland, and were largely driven to extinct when the fall of sea levels during the ice age allowed these rodent-like tribbetheres to invade the Meridians. The puffbird alone was spared because of its specialized diet; it mostly eats specific varieties of poisonous coastal snail (which themselves derive the toxins from feeding on certain varieties of algae), and the poisons it ingests from these molluscs are accumulated in its flesh and plumage. The puffbirds are able to sequester the toxins and redirect it into their plumage, rendering themselves equally distasteful, which is advertised through extraordinarily vivid colouration.

Excess toxins are voided through their waste, and it may use this to additional defence by firing its digestive liquid from its cloaca, aiming for eyes or other sensitive areas. Using its hooked beak, it can cleanly slice the snails from their shells and hook out the soft meats. More newly arrived molodonts, yet to evolve adaptations to overcome the same defences of the puffbird's toxic prey, allowing the puffbird to survive, for now. The puffbird's beak is a more versatile tool than just a snail extractor and its diet is not so specializes, and it can also extract grubs from underneath wood and edible seeds from their husks; during the winter, they venture further inland in search of food, and seeds and grubs make up the majority of its diet instead of snails. The puffbirds create burrow nests on cliffs and hidden locations in regions near the coasts and rarely stray more than a kilometre or two from their nests, for they must shelter each night from the freezing cold darkness. Puffbirds are often seen intermingling with colonies of pretenguin and marine molodonts that rest along the beaches, feeding opportunistically on the flies and other biting parasites that endlessly infest them, and these larger beach dwellers are all too happy to roll over to let the small and agile birds to pick them clean.

Gagglefowl (Nitidornis virgatus): One of the most common grazing species of the isle, herds sometimes over two-hundred strong clip the northern steppe into a well-trimmed lawn with their broad beaks, leaving behind innumerable piles of foul-smelling poop wherever they go. This is the most herbivorously inclined species of sparrowgull, as a specialized grazer in a group predominantly made up of omnivores and carnivores. They've developed a fermentation chamber from extension of the crop which allow them to better digest the hardy grasses which make up the majority of their diet, putting them at a slight advantage over the grazing archangels which they coexist with (development of such a trait would impede flying capabilities, but the gagglefowl, already flightless, has nothing to lose from this more efficient digestion). The development of such an organ is likely what allowed this species to survive competition from such invasive arrivals, which are generally better suited for grazing than sparrowgulls are. Weighing in between sixty and seventy pounds and up to a metre tall, adults have little to fear from all but the largest shadowstalkers, but chicks are often picked off soon after reaching semi-independence by petrel-like sparrowgulls and the smaller slasheratus.

Adults migrate to the southern scrubland to time the hatching of their eggs with the flowering of berry-like fruits on certain bushes, which provide a more nutritious and easily digestible diet for newly emerged chicks than grass and moss. Regurgitating the semi-digested foodstuffs into the mouths of their young also transfers the digestive bacteria they'll need later in life for their hardier diet from parent to child. The eggs and newborn chicks are kept under the wings, although the mechanism for doing so is slightly less specialized than in the related pitpockets and gadawings, with merely a pocket of elastic skin in the area underneath their wings, insulated by the outer feather coating, rather than pockets in the wings themselves, likely a divergence from a common ancestor with more morphologically primitive brooding structures. Smaller herds often form huge congregations during this period as adults work to protect as many chicks as possible and for better protection against tribbats. The densely striped black-and-white colouration of both adults and juveniles work as visual confusion, blending individuals together, making it difficult to distinguish where one animal ends and another begins, as well as disguising their overall body shape by breaking up shadows on the body. If threatened up close, the gagglefowl lift their wings up to reveal vibrant red display feathers underneath to startle predators. Despite their rotundity, gagglefowl are surprisingly fleet-footed if necessary, although just as often, they may band together, using their numbers to intimidate predators.

Despite their best efforts, about ninety-percent of chicks do not survive their first year. The greatest danger to chicks is not predators, but the cold; with the ice age's effects spreading very quickly (in an evolutionary time scale), the species is not especially well-adapted to the rapid chill that arrives every single night; temperatures may drop nearly forty degrees centigrade from day to night in only a few hours as powerful gales whip the polar air from glaciers on the northern continent, with the warmth of the sun no longer taking the bite away. Although adults are usually able to weather the drop in temperature, smaller and less well insulated juveniles caught out in the open will freeze to death very quickly. During the coldest nights, adults huddle in tightly-packed bundles like penguins to keep body heat from escaping, with the youngest members kept in the centre of the pile, which may be more than sixty degrees warmer than the outside air.

Snake-Necked Pretenguin (Ophiocollus spheniscoides): During the Ultimocene, many, many groups of birds have descended to the sea to harvest its bounty at its richest state in the planet's history, more than ever before as avians diverge from one another evermore drastically. Sea mittens, dolfinches, burdles, eargills, and sealumps, among others, and it is not surprising that the sparrowgulls have also taken the plunge. However, the fare of these are not quite as derived as many other groups and in fact are outwardly very familiar. The pretenguins are upright birds with stumpy legs that rely on wing-based underwater movement, swimming gracefully in their element but rather slow and cumbersome on land. With no way to retain eggs inside the body and having not evolved live birth, pretenguins are coastal marine birds, returning each day to their colonies to sleep and nest. The snake-necked pretenguin differs little from the base form in these regards, but its main defining traits are clearly visible even from a brief glance.

First is its size; adults of this species can reach nearly four metres in length and up to five-hundred kilograms, making them the largest of the sparrowgulls, by far. Secondly is their long, plesiosaur-like neck, which makes up roughly half of its body length, and similar to plesiosaurs, is used for its hunting methods underwater. Plowing its beak through the soft sand to snatch up smaller benthic animals of all varieties, its broad beak capable of crushing the shells of marine crustaceans and molluscs up to three kilograms in weight. The shallow seas around the coasts of offshore islands are often marked by the criss-crossing marks of thousands of feeding pretenguins, which, although washed away by the currents in the night, are replaced by more hunting hordes the next day. They can also quickly lunge upward into dense shoals of baitfish to grab mouthfuls of unwary fish, their necks keeping their heads a distance from their bodies.

Not as ocean-bound as many other seabird groups, they return each night into colonies along the coast; snake-necked pretenguins are not technically restricted to the Meridians, with populations on many coastal islands and even along some regions of the northern continent, but here is where the largest populations dwell, due to its area, more reasonable climate, diversity of prey, and general lack of land predators capable of hunting them. Only the extreme nighttime freezes are a potential deterrent, and this is easily circumvented with their thick, dense, insulating plumage and crowding together in dense colonies. Their long necks, although useful hunting tools underwater, are more of a handicap on land. It's difficult for them to stand upright, never mind walk, so the bulk of their terrestrial movements involving shuffling or sliding on their stomachs. Nevertheless, their sheer bulk and snapping beaks provide enough of a deterrent for most predators, particularly when they stay in numbers, so each animal can defend one another. Young pretenguins are most at risk, with many falling prey each breeding season to skystrikes and sea ravens, opportunistic predatory tribbats coming down from inland, and the swarms of large carnivorous land crabs that rarely stray far from the pretenguin colonies. Parasitic infestations are also a reoccurring blight, with their densely packed colonies particularly susceptible; although merely an irritant for healthy adults, these can be fatal for young chicks.

Imperial Sea Raven (Gelocorax imperator): The largest of the flying sparrowgulls is an opportunistic forager with a taste for flesh. Soaring on wings that can be nearly thirteen feet across (although still dwarfed by the larger shadowskimmers and seraphs), this species ranges wide across the Icebox Seaway and can be found across practically any insular environment, but some have made their home around the large equatorial archipelago of the Meridians on more terrestrial fare, with few land predators to compete with and large populations of flightless birds. When the night chill sweeps through the lands, the temperate climate rapidly drops to subzero temperatures in hours, inevitably leaving a trail of frozen corpses in its wake. Those many which could not find shelter before the bitter glacial winds of an ice age world cut a swathe of frigid death across even the balmiest locales, particularly those of the young, the old, and the sick. They need not expend much effort in gathering delicious meats; they simply wait until the morning and clean the lands of any who did not make it through the night. These is little shortage of delicious carrion for this huge vulture-like avian, and it takes to even the vilest and most rotted carcasses with zeal.

Often, the greatest challenge for the sea ravens is not finding food, but eating it, for the cold freezes the meat solid; the particularly thick and hooked bill and strong jaws of the sea raven allows them to cut morsels free from the petrified bodies, a task eased when flocks of the sparrowgulls descend on a single carcass. Sea ravens have sensitive noses, easing the task of finding the bodies scattered across the lands, even those buried beneath ice and frost. This diet is reliable enough that the sea ravens of the Meridians breed year round, nourishing their chicks on the glut of chilled meats scattered across the lands. Elsewhere, sea ravens travel far and wide in search of food, mobbing colonies of other seabirds or hunting in the treacherous seas for aquatic prey, but on the Meridians, many sea ravens can sustain themselves without ever even seeing the ocean. This is not a permanent lifestyle, for as animals further adapt to the ice age cooling, mortality rates will drop and food will become ever scarcer and less reliable over millennia. But for now, generations of sea ravens on the Meridians are able to subsist almost entirely on this diet without needing to venture out to sea, seizing an advantage that may not last, but will easily sustain their population at least a few hundred generations.

Some days, the sea raven is not so lucky, and they do not find carrion in the night, and supplement their scavenging lifestyle with live prey. Despite its size and fearsome appearance, the sea raven is no bird-of-prey; its flat, semi-webbed feet cannot grasp prey, it lacks the speed and agility to effectively chase down flying prey, and it is still generally outmatched in weight class by the flocks of grazing sparrowgulls that populate the Meridians, which know better than to flee and will stand their ground against smaller predators. Chicks are taken most often, snatched from beneath the notice of their parents in split-second lunges, although mobs of sea ravens can sometimes overtake adult birds (usually ones already weakened by a prior condition) with repeated slashes and bites. A mob of sea ravens overtaking large prey is vicious but not efficient; like the related skystrike, it relies entirely on its bludgeoning beak to kill prey it cannot swallow whole. Sea ravens have little shortage of food, as there is relatively little competition among other native predators for it and stable populations of moderately-sized terrestrial animals to sustain year-round.