Aukrow

The aukrow is a small aukvulture with a distinctive pattern. Much of its plumage has become darker, varying across its 4 foot tall body from steel grey to black to iridescent green. White, once dominant across its feathers, now forms highlights; a band across the wings, over the rump, at the tips of the tial feathers, and in a series of bold stripes from neck to snout. Its bill is shorter than its ancestor's but more robust, indicating an increase in bite force, and its wingspan is shorter relative to its body size, suggesting a more sedentary habit. Both are true: this is a tentatively forest-dwelling seabird, which has begun moving away from the oceans in its own ways. While the giant aukvultures, due to their size, become dominant predators of open grasslands, the aukrow uses its smaller stature to take advantage of more secluded environments. Though very much still a seabird in that it is primarily found in coastal areas and gains at least half of its diet from the ocean (be it fish caught on the wing, or washed up on the shore), the rest of its food is now acquired on dry land, in vegetated habitats isolated from the destructive herds of thorngrazers that roam the northern continent.

It flies widely between islands, and makes occasional ventures toward inland waterways, having a worldwide distribution, albeit limited mainly to the jagged edges of both main continents, from pole to pole. It lands on sandy beaches and then walks into the forest to hunt. Here its variegated plumage, especially its alternating dark and white markings, hide it in the dappled light of sun and shade. It stalks out small prey like burdles and molodonts and strikes them unseen until it is too late to run, and occasionally succeeds in snatching the neck of an unwary young wumpo, or some other larger game and making a larger kill. With grasping front feet, it can rear up and reach into low brush to deftly steal eggs from nests of island birds still naive to such threats. And in doing so, it comes across novel food sources; fruits and nuts, still somewhat of a rarity in this new, warm era, are foreign to a seabird's diet, but welcomed; the aukrow is omnivorous, with a broad and varied diet. This is inherited from its ocean age ancestors, scavengers of gravedigger refuse, but among the hothouse aukvultures, now mainly huge and formidable carnivores, such a diverse taste in foods is unique, and now benefits the aukrow alone. Wide-ranging and able to feed on most things it comes across, it represents a different sort of success story to its giant, bloodthirsty relatives. For now, it succeeds as a generalist, but its worldwide range, and the fact that its many populations are now ceasing to migrate widely and so mingle with one another, means it is likely to evolve into many new descendants in the very near future; the aukrow is a likely progenitor of an entirely new branch of the archangel family tree.