Fallen Angel

The start of hothouse age allowed the pocketfowl to spread south to Serinaustra, which soon became a land of verdant swamps and forests with relatively few competitors. These seraphs, which carried their pupating young in pouches on the female's lower abdomen, were generalized omnivores but fed mainly on plants, and found an endless garden buffet as the land warmed, trees grew, and the world turned evergreen. And as their food grew more abundant, the pocketfowl evolved into a far larger animal. 

Fallen angels are a species of giant pocketfowl that, in adulthood, are browsers. Their necks, reaching to nine feet, are now long enough to reach the canopies of trees. They move through forest in small herds, and are competent runners on the ground with powerful arms and legs. They need to be, for in order to get taller and grow a more efficient stomach to digest huge amounts of leaves, they became too heavy to take flight and become marooned on the ground, lending their name. Now weighing up to five hundred pounds, adults outgrow the ability of their wings to carry them through ontogeny, transitioning from small flocking goose-like fliers which live around freshwater habitats to fully terrestrial, woodland-dwelling adults that are similar in niche to deer and giraffes, leading to a new name for a clade beginning with this species: giraffowl. This change of form and function with maturity results in an unusual dynamic where completely flightless adult animals have acquired a very wide range across Serinaustra, over to the Anstevan archipelago, and to many southern Serinarctan islands including Trang and the Trilltiontrees, in a short period of time due to the juveniles being strong fliers and prone to migrations that can carry them even over oceans. They lose their power of flight around a year and a half of age, about the size of a large swan, as their bodies keep growing - for another three years - while their wing finger fuses and stops growth. It is at this time that the juvenile angels move away from wetlands, where they have grown from hatching on algae, fish, and insects - and toward the forested upland habitats where they will spend the rest of their lives. Starting as primarily insectivorous chicks, by adulthood they are strongly herbivorous.

The fallen angel, a species in transition, isn't yet perfectly adapted to its two different niches. Young adults retain their flight feathers and an entirely useless wing finger for years after being grounded, though often stop growing most of these feathers within a few years once they are repeatedly torn out through damage as as the animal walks, until they remain only above the elbow. In old adults, the wing finger - as it gets caught up on things - may simply break off, leaving a stump.

Adult fallen angels live in herds led by one dominant male, who is much more brightly colored and sports a large bill crest. Females, as in the pocketfowl, brood their young in a pouch until they hatch, at which time they are entirely on their own. This species does not imprint, and the chicks are self-sufficient immediately, able to crawl out of the pouch and take off. Weighing just 5 ounces, with 12 inch wingspans, the newborns instinctively flock together and seek out the wetland habitats where they will live for their first one to two years, moving in age-segregated flocks for protection. Juveniles can walk, fly, and swim well, and live a live in three worlds until maturity when they become entirely ground-based animals, losing not only their wings but their webbed feet, and developing proportions that make swimming awkward and slow.