Caliban: the Cliff Jumper

A diving tribbat of a storm-battered coastline, the caliban's ancestors once fed on birds, but now favor seafood.

290 Million Years Post-Establishment

The storm-wracked islands and the outlying peninsula along cradle bay on Serinarcta's eastern shores comprise the region known as the hurricane coast. These are the hothouse's roughest waters, and yet because strong ocean currents here are maintained by powerful oceanic storms that slam waves against the cliffs, the productivity of this region is extremely high. Wave action pushing against the land stirs up nutrient rich sediments carried inland from across the ocean, supporting a constant bloom of plankton and attracting vast shoals of fish toward the continental shelf. The near-shore waters of the hurricane coast are so rich in food that for one tribbat, it has become all but unnecessary to take flight and soar above the open seas to find food. This is the only place where you can find a sea-diving flapsnapper, taking a role normally expected of the tribbfishers. This is the home of the caliban.

Calibans are a species of guzzle, and their ancestors 10 million years before them were bird-eaters, not fishers. They preyed on the expansive mowerbird flocks of the early hothouse, striking the birds as they were most concentrated just before and after they visited their roosts. Caliban ancestors later followed other flocking prey as the mowerbird swarms thinned slightly and became more dispersed following climate changes which continued to fragment the once extensive sogland ecosystem. They found themselves along coastal regions, where they predated the cliff-side colonies of nesting sparrowgulls by gobbling up any unattended young. This later evolved into piracy, diving down the cliffs to surprise returning parent birds with crops full of fish intended for their young. They would slam into their victims, forcing them to regurgitate all of their hard-earned spoils, and the guzzler would catch the meal mid-air before alighting on the side of the cliff and there remaining until the next time a target approached. But this diving behavior also opened up the opportunity to access food sources the guzzler would not necessarily realize were accessible before. Sometimes a caliban ancestor would miss its mark and crash down into the waves below, scattering whole flocks of birds and realizing that it had inadvertently fallen into a feast; a bait ball of small fish, pushed right to the surface by a swarm of underwater predators, meant that the guzzler could swallow up whole shoals of them right from the surface. The most enterprising guzzlers would learn to repeat this trick, launching themselves into the water from the higher cliffs so as to propel them below the water to reach fish even when they were not at the surface. Their wings grew shorter and more rounded as this diving habit increased, better paddles to "fly" beneath the waves and chase fish with, but less suited to fly in the air. Today the caliban is a skilled cliff-jumper and eats mainly fish, moving quickly and nimbly through the turbulent water to fill its expansive throat with food caught by its own skill rather than stolen. Its diving adaptations are many, and include no external nostrils, for they would be inundated with water as it hits the sea at such force, and ears which fold backwards and close for the same reason. But it is now a very poor flier, and can not take off from the water at all. It can only flutter weakly from one perch to another of an equal or lesser height, and instead it climbs the cliffs, ascending upward after each hunt by clinging to the sheer rock with its sharply recurved wing and tail claws. It has also evolved a somewhat odd hooked chin, which it additionally uses to support itself as it climbs upward, like a mountaneer's hook.

The caliban is the most social guzzler, roosting in large aggregations. Abundant food reduces need to be territorial, and large numbers allow for better defense of their young from predators like villaingulls, which now turn the tables and will threaten and steal from the caliban just as it once did to the earlier fishing sparrowgulls. This is not to say the caliban is friendly - on their own, they bicker often, hissing at neighbors which step a little too close, slapping rivals for mates with sharp blows of their wings, and occasionally eating lost pups of other pairs in the colony whose parents misplaced them. But the arrival of such an enemy will get all of the caliban's attention as they turn their irritable tempers against their shared foe, quickly snapping their fanged jaws with an audible clap and emitting deep, guttural growls. They can put aside their own drama long enough to fight as a united force against such dangers which could threaten all of their own young, and if a predator is very persistent the males of the colony will go so far as to form a barrier of snarling jaws at the edge of the colony to prevent any intruders from sneaking in to grab a pup. Calibans are not a highly dimorphic species, and males and females usually look alike. But when displaying in this way, or when fighting each other over females, the male calibans will use chromatophores in their skin to flash bright black and yellow banded patterns onto the jaws, and pull back their lips to gape their mouths to reveal their vibrantly red gums and contrasting pearly white fangs. It is a clear visual signal saying "get lost!"