Kaks

If you ever find yourself wandering to the north of the longdark swamp, where the forests always see daylight, you might hear a repetitive thumping noise echoing down from the highest canopy trees. Kak. Kak. Kak. This is the sound made by the feeding of several unique species of scrabblegrabbers, which live high above their ground, as they hammer their their large tentacle claws into tree bark and insect nests to open them up to find food. Different kaks target different surfaces with these tools, with several opening old, dead trees to catch large beetle larvae. The moundcracker kak, though - a big-headed arboreal scrounger about as big as a cat - is an ant-nest specialist.

Many types of ants live in these steamy jungles, including deadly swarms and derived flying creatures, but also colonial, nest-building ants which remain successful in a niche that is timeless. Many types of nests are built off the ground to avoid flooding, and these may be made from hardened mud, chewed up wood pulp, or even animal feces, all of which can be shaped and dried into cement-like fortresses which protect the colon against smaller enemies and inclement weather. Here, the insects can grow fat and happy, raising larvae in special chambers within, while filling others with food storage that, for some species, includes honey. And the moundcracker kak just so happens to love a bit of honey with a hearty meal of ant grubs. 

The moundcracker spends its days seeking out isolated ant nests, climbing up to reach them, and making a true nuisance of itself punching holes inside them to steal itself a meal. These insects don't take kindly to this of course, and many bite and sting their attacker, so that the moundcracker - even with its hardened bare skin shield - must work quickly to get what it wants. It first taps the mound all around and listens for the echos, identifying tiny changes in the sounds produced to determine which parts of the structure hold the prizes and which are likely to be empty or filled with inedible debris. It then begins to rap its uppermost claw on the nest forcefully until it makes enough of a crack to fit the hooks of its others inside and pull the structure apart enough to reach in and hook onto the honeycombs and the chambers containing the ant's young. Once it grasps its reward, it retreats from the advancing army to feed at its leisure in a more secluded place.

Like other scrabblegrabbers, kaks are monogamous species which form enduring pair bonds. Though they find food alone, partners share a nest and often bring back food for their mate in case they had less foraging success. Their nests are dug out of the center of old, hollow trees, often more than 20 feet deep. There in the dark and secluded cavity, they raise a single chick just once every two years, which eats the same high-energy diet that the adults so favor, and grows quickly on it, but nonetheless remains with its parents for multiple seasons. Though it may seem that the foraging behavior used by the adult is not hard to learn, the forest is a dangerous and complex environment to navigate, and chicks must learn how to survive it before they become independent. With so few offspring born to each pair, each one gets as much attention as possible to improve its chances of success.

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There are many species of kaks, a family of scroungers comprising multiple genera. They are, in many ways, analogous to the large scarreots of the northern continent. Like them, they have evolved into many niches, each species consuming a different diet, and adapting their specialized hooked tentacles to best make use of it.

Clobbering kaks are a species endemic to the southern sky islands. They have become the biggest species of their family, weighing up to 40 pounds, with males larger than females. They are robust birds with the largest "claws" of all the scrabblegrabbers, that of their upper tentacle being far larger than the actual beak which is hidden below it, and adapted into a powerful chisel-like tool. It is used to grind burrows into the cement of the sky islands in order to nest, and grows continuously from its edge to remain sharp. Much of the clobbering kak's diet is plant life which grows on the cliff edges of the islands, which it scrapes up, roots and all, and picks into small pieces with the smaller side claws of its mouth before swallowing. These birds, though close relatives of the moundcracker kak in its same genus, lack its bold colors and are patterned with mottled, earthy greys and greens which lend camouflage against their background. But for an animal as large and well-defended as this, this cryptic coloration does not serve as much to hide it from predators, as to hide it from prey.

The clobbering kak is an omnivore, and one that - though it technically could - does not like to subsist on plants alone. Meat is a more nutritious meal and one that can provide far more energy - it is also vital if the kak's chicks are to grow fast and become strong. But this scrounger is not fast, or especially agile; it clambers along the cliffs at a slow pace, using both its face and its talons to help it find purchase on the steep terrain, and it has no ability to pursue prey at any speed. It can, however, sneak up quietly on prey as it sleeps, for its eyesight is keen in low-light, and it can also lie in plain sight for it to come close enough to ambush during the day thanks to its unassuming coloring and slow movements. As soon as anything is within range, the normally sedate kak lunges and strikes its largest facial claw from behind at the skull of its prey, delivering a deadly concussive blow that often cracks the head open and exposes the brain - which is, coincidentally, the kak's favorite part of the carcass, and what it usually seeks to eat first. 

Biding its time browsing the sparse herbs and grasses of the cliff, it can survive in between the occasional large kills that ultimately provide most of its nutrition, and which it guards from all rivals, usually hauling away deep into its den to savor for several days. Monogamous like all members of their genus, clobbering kaks forage for greens alone, but will share successful kills with their partner, calling them back to the roost to feast with a loud booming call. Hunting occurs most frequently when these birds have chicks under six months of age and in their most rapid phase of growth, but like the hookbilled kak, chicks will not starve on a diet of mostly plants - they will, however, take much longer to grow and reach independence. Islands in well-situated places with more abundant prey can allow the clobbering kak to raise two chicks at a time, for they always lay two eggs. Where meat is less available though, the parents will usually cull their brood around a month after hatching, feeding the weaker chick to its sibling in order to aid in its growth.

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The hookbilled kak is a very unusual bird, even by the standards of tentacled ones. It has large, curved nails on each facial tentacle which it uses to suspend itself from the horizontal branches of trees, lending itself a resting pose in which its anatomy as a bird is difficult to make out, and is so divergent even among kaks that this species is placed in its own genus alone. Green, mossy plumage camouflages it against the forest backdrop, with a dark pigmented band within its eye also breaking up its shape. It is primarily an herbivore which hangs quietly in the ant trees which form the canopies of Serinaustra's largest sky island, and uses its feet like hands, to strip leaves and carry them to the mouth. It has evolved this diet in response to becoming gradually isolated at the pinnacle of the island over several million years as it has risen up above the surrounding forest and now leaves it marooned there, unable to leave without crossing a deadly expanse of open, near-vertical cliff-side. Food is less abundant here, with fewer fruiting trees and large wood-boring insects, and with the endemic ants of the trees better protected deep within the walls of the cementrees that were generally too strong to crack, and so pushing the ancestor of this species to feed more heavily on easily available vegetation to compensate. Their metabolic rate has not slowed, as sometimes occurs in similar animals elsewhere, but their activity rate has reduced and their brains shrunken in size by about 20% from their nearest relatives which feed on more nutritious food. 

This kak spends most of its waking hours feeding, consuming more than half its own weight in greens in a day. It usually lives in pairs which keep some distance from each other except at night, relying on being inconspicuous and freezing when threatened to hide against its surroundings during the day. Yet even this scrounger, sometimes, engages in play behavior, which is important in pair formation during the breeding season and re-affirming those bonds later. A nutritionally barren diet makes raising chicks difficult, so that only a single one is born at a time and fed by both parents. The egg is incubated in a crevice in a spire, but the nestling is immediately taken and carried by the parent once hatched, clinging to its belly similarly to some squaboons. Its growth on a leaf diet is very slow, and adulthood and full independence is not acquired for two full years, even though the adult weighs only about six pounds.

Though it eats some 80% leaves, the hookbilled kak is not an obligate folivore. If it can get other foods it will readily eat them, anything from fruit to eggs to the chicks of other small birds. Rarely, it may even use its very strong beak-like face claw to kill a larger animal, sometimes striking it by surprise if a murd or other creature happens to pass close by. This behavior is, however, much less common than in the clobbering kak, which has evolved in the same habitat type, but found its own very different solution to a lack of other traditional food sources.