A Few Waterbirds of the Late Hothouse

290 Million Years Post-Establishment

The squiguin is an aquatic scrounger and a small relative of the whelicans, sharing a common ancestor around 275 million years P.E. It is the only member of its genus left today, and has a small range contained entirely within the severed sea of east Serinaustra. The squiguins' ancestors were just one of a range of species that flourished in seas worldwide by the mid hothouse, but today this species is alone; competition with the later-appearing foons - similar, but more socially complex marine trunkos - is the most likely factor in their decline, as many foons share its exact same diet. It is only in the severed sea, cut off from the rest of the ocean for 6 million years, that foons did not reach, and thus here the squiguin has survived. For now, not even the little shellsplitter or other nutcracker foons - capable of swimming inland via rivers - can reach this truly isolated sea, for no passage connects it in any way to the ocean. And so the squiguin remains abundant here long after its kind otherwise vanished outside its last haven.

While whelicans share the same lobed feet and general body shape of the squigin, they are far larger and generally able to filter-feed (and therefore do not compete for food with foons). But the squiguin never evolved a large throat pouch or a suction manner of collecting food, and instead specialized as a mollusc-eater. With bottle-opener tentacles that grasp and twist and a nutcracker beak, it can deftly open the shells of even the most well armored clams and snails. It is an active and wide-ranging swimmer, quick and nimble, but it is not very playful, for it always forages alone and even breeding pairs come together only for a short time to mate and then also part ways. Perhaps this solitary habit is because the waters of the severed sea are notably clear from a lack of river drainages to fill them with sediment, which means that the filter-feeding molluscs it preys upon have less food themselves than they do in other bodies of water. They can never gather in dense aggregations, and remain relatively rare and widely distributed across the seabed. Thus there may simply not be enough of them in any given part of the sea to support more than one squiguin.

Because the sea is clear and has high visibility, the squiguin relies on vision as their primary and dominant sense, with enough visibility always remaining in the shallow water to find food by sight even at night. And because it is so keen of sight, some of the squiguin's unusual traits, especially elongated ear-shaped wattles of skin on either cheek, likely evolved to help distinguish this species from others at a distance by giving it a very distinct silhouette. This would have improved long-distance identification of potential mates or potential rivals, at a time where multiple squiguins still coexisted in the wider ocean environment. It persists now as a seemingly vestigial trait, as now there are no other species like it to confuse it with; though whether only this one became trapped in the severed sea when it was cut off from the open ocean, or whether it was the one to ultimately drive any others in this limited space to extinction, is still unclear.

Only the female squiguin ever leaves the water, for she must incubate her single egg. With her legs set very far back on her body and splayed outwards, she cannot walk, only pushing herself on her belly, a most ungainly manner of locomotion. Lacking a watertight brood pouch like a whelican, or even a non-watertight one like a foon, she must ever so carefully straddle her newly lain egg with her body and hold it beneath her abdomen between her feet. Incubation is prolonged, taking around 6 weeks, during which time she is vulnerable on a sandy shore or islet and cannot feed herself, resulting in significant weight loss. Such a primitive method of brooding has limited the maximum size of the squiguin substantially, and at 60 lbs, it could likely not be much bigger while still having enough maneuverability on land to avoid crushing its own egg. Though it is true that for now the squiguin's lifestyle still allows for its survival in this last pocket of habitat, it is difficult to view this species as anything except a living fossil clinging to life in a world that has changed very much since it first appeared, and which has changed far faster than it seems able to keep up with. Foons may well never reach the severed sea, for sea levels are still dropping and rivers will shrink too as rainfall lessens. But the squiguin's current refuge is also a trap, and when conditions change here, too, then it will have nowhere else to go. During periods of stable climate and environmental conditions, ten million years may feel like very little, but this is the late Ultimocene, an era marked by dramatic and rapid changes of both world and the life that inhabits it. And in the hothouse era, ten million years has been long enough to render the world the squiguin first evolved in obsolete. Facing fierce competitors and bigger changes soon to come, it is a species now living on borrowed time in a hidden away place... a relict of what was and could have been, but was never meant to be.

The porpoons are a genus of platyporp descended dolfinches which have returned to oceanic habitats, albeit almost always near-shore coastal ones. Some species are also found in the polar basin. They are small in relation to many earlier dolfinches but larger than the platyporp itself, most species reaching a length of 2-3.5 feet and a weight of 15-40 lbs. Porpoons are found across the world's shallow coastal waters and range significantly in appearance. They are known for their head feathering, which is much more prominent than the short whiskers or scarce fuzz which is typical for dolfinches, most of which appear virtually without feathers. The genes which produce feathering have persisted in the dolfinch lineage for many millions of years, and in this genus, they have been re-activated in select body areas not for flight nor for insulation, but for display.

Porpoons usually show strong sexual dimorphism, with males being more colorful and sometimes adorned with varied head crests and vibrant plumage. These seabirds have narrow, sharply serrated beaks to catch fish and highly streamlined bodies. They are exceptionally quick and agile in the water, swimming laps around would-be predators and capable of leaping up to six feet out of water at high speed when threatened. Like many other dolfinches, they are pro-social animals which which practice care toward not only their young but other adults, even those they may not know closely. By working together to mob a predator which threatens one of them, they can defend themselves as a whole even from carnivores much bigger than any one individual. Though each one is small and relatively weak, in their numbers they can even blind an attacker by jabbing their beaks at the sensitive eyes. This is all the more remarkable, because porpoons do not live in permanent, stable groups where many individuals will be familiar with each other. They will come to the aid of any other member of their species - and sometimes similar related species - so that when they are in danger, they too will be protected in turn.

The sprightly porpoon is a species endemic to the cradle bay region of northeast Serinarcta. Males of this form have red bills and rounded facial plumage which is erected to lend their normally streamlined heads a comical circular appearance during courtship, and their darker plumage is iridescent, catching the light and flashing colors when at the surface. In addition, they sport striking golden "eyelash" plumes behind either eye which trail along behind them in the water, and their chest is adorned with two prominent black stripes which wrap around the breast. The female, in contrast, has only a small head crest, and her belly is speckled rather than barred. Male porpoons do not practice parental care, leaving them time to cavort playfully in the water and try to take many mates, while females invest a lot of time and energy into each litter of young they bear and are thus highly selective in mate selection. Some younger males which may have subpar adornments may get little attention; they can become very pushy in their efforts to reproduce to compensate, and when several pursue at once, they can cause females stress with unrelenting chasing, reducing their survival rates. To help prevent this, females form strong social bonds with one another and don't travel alone if they can help it. By standing up for one another, they can keep unruly males in their place and protect themselves from unwanted harassment. This cooperation goes as far as rearing their young together. Unlike pre-hothouse dolfinches, and some contemporary forms, porpoons still give birth on land and their young are not immediately strong swimmers. In the sprightly porpoon, female pair bonds are typical, while males lead lives as bachelors which do not form quite as strong social bonds and which may come and go from larger pods regularly.

Coupled females will time their pregnancies close together so that they can protect each other's offspring, hiding their young in sheltered bays and rocky coves where the waves and larger oceanic predators cannot threaten them. As one female returns to sea to hunt and joins with a larger group of foraging mothers, its partner remains with their chicks and keeps them from wandering or being found by shoreline predators like seademons or villaingulls. Females have dark bills, unlike males, but a small red spot on the lower mandible is present, and newborn chicks instinctively peck this marking to elicit regurgitation from the adults when they need to be fed. The young will only leave the shelter of their nursery when they are around two months old, by which time they have grown strong enough to follow their mothers out to open water. They will not be independent entirely from them, however, for as long as ten months. Female pairs behave in every respect like mates, for males don't form pair bonds at all, and such couples will persist throughout the life of an individual, though most will re-pair when one mate dies. Social bonds are affirmed with synchronized head movements and calling when on land as well as mutual allo-preening of one another's head feathers. In water, pairs which are just beginning to know each other will often swim closely together in formation, their ability to match one another's movements and mirror one another being a good indication that they will match well working together to raise their young later on. 

The surfcutter is one of the larger chatterchasers that is still capable of powerful flight and can reach four feet tall. It is primarily found across the stairway isles of extreme northern Serinaustra, though its range can extend somewhat wider both north and south along equatorial waters as they are strong fliers and are prone to wander in search of abundant food.

These birds, as their name suggests, strongly favor seashore environs and are only very rarely sighted inland; their hunting behavior is closely tied to wide, shallow expanses of mostly vegetation-free water that are rare outside the sea coast. Like their ancestors these chatterchasers still live in clans and hunt cooperatively; their method now involves teams of anywhere from ten to forty, which after locating fish schools from high up in the air will then fly down a few dozen meters out into the sea, and touch down where they can just barely still touch the bottom. They quickly form a line, then run toward shore, those on the edges of the line running slightly ahead of the rest. This forms a moving fence, trapping small fish from fleeing between them and pushing them to shore where other members of the clan wait on land to pounce and capture as many as possible as they are trapped against the beach. This method of foraging is very effective, allowing the entire group to subsist on prey items that may individually be only a couple of inches long but are filling in mass. But as the shoals of fish are often widely distributed in patches that move over time, surfcutters are naturally nomadic and only remain in one territory when their eggs are being brooded; while females are on eggs, males and unmated females may travel up to 25 miles a day to find food to bring back for them. Surfcutters are one of a small subset of sparrowgulls that will transport their chicks in flight, with young instinctively showing a clinging reflex when lifted off the ground and the ability to grasp the feathers of the adult's back with their toes from infancy; this is related to their need to travel to forage for food efficiently to support their large clans, sometimes totaling as many as eighty adult individuals.

Members of a clan are not necessarily related, with both males and females dispersing and joining new groups at adulthood almost equally, depending mainly on the sex ratio of their natal group. Clans are loosely matriarchal, however, in that a dominant lead female will eventually give up her position to one of her daughters. It is therefore slightly more likely males will disperse, though most females will not wait for the chance to take over as lifespans are in excess of 50 years, and even then only one of many will ever gain the opportunity. Clan leaders are usually those with the most experience and are important in guiding their groups to the best feeding grounds. During times of food security, many pairs can breed in each clan, and the average clutch size is a single chick, likely because each one has a high chance of survival with so many adults to raise it. If food is in short supply, however, the dominant female will very likely destroy any eggs laid by her inferiors to control their numbers and avoid the clan growing too big that it must break up, or having chicks being born that cannot survive on limited rations. Not usually territorial, clans are malleable and multiple groups may come together to cooperate where it benefits them. Occasionally unified clans may permanently fuse, especially if one is small and has lost members, but this is not without conflict as the two leaders are likely to come to clash with only one retaining the coveted position. If the ousted one leaves the clan, she will likely be followed by several daughters loyal to her, potentially causing rifts in the hierarchy. Clans can also fracture if a leader dies and multiple sibling females that may have been waiting for the chance to take over fight over the position, with those which lose being driven out of the clan. These are the primary ways that new clans form, as young dispersing individuals almost never have the ambition or experience to go off on their own and instead join with other established groups.

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The sealump trunkos are the dominant land animal group of the island continent of Ansteva, and among them their subgroup called the leaplumps is for sure the most numerous and successful lineage of sealump to be found there. Leaplumps, named for their long hind legs, lightly built frames, and (generally) athletic movement, make up 60% of all the island continent's trunko species. They are an early offshoot of sealump, diverged 19.5 million years ago, and are the oldest surviving clade of them on Ansteva, with all other living species having a later point of divergence. The earliest leaplumps were still relatively large animals, for they had not had a lot of time to change drastically from their earlier ancestors, but were distinct for the loss of the lobes on their feet that made them powerful swimmers, elongated hind legs for running locomotion, and for noticeably reduced body size of less than 200 lbs. The rapid shrinkage of the leaplump line is an example of island dwarfism exaggerated by the initial barrenness of the island which lacked any other competitors, and thus allowed these early colonists to rapidly diversify and fill almost every niche. Today leaplumps have diversified enormously from their start, and are some of the most variable of any trunko clade. Some have continued to shrink, while others reversed the trend at some point and found new niches at larger but now much more slender sizes. They now range in size from 10 pounds to over 700 pounds. Most species are mainly herbivores, but one family is an exception. The smallest group of leaplumps is known as the strilts, and includes within it two branches: the more basal shorestrilts, and the even smaller skipper strilts. These quick, nimble animals are still very omnivorous, with diets that favor animal more than plant matter. They are the trunkos most adapted toward a jumping locomotion, with legs that store elastic energy between bounds, giving them an energy efficient movement and the ability to both escape ambush predators on short notice and run down their own smaller prey. They have become Ansteva's analogs to the snifflers elsewhere, though don't quite approach their smallest sizes. And though quite capable of moving quickly on dry land, some of these little trunkos still have a fondness for the water.

The striped strilt is the quintessential shorestrilt and a very common species on Ansteva, where it is wide ranging across much of the subcontinent. A semi-solitary animal of wetlands, it weighs about 16 lbs. Day in and day out, it probes with its sensitive trunk in sand and shallow water to find seeds, tubers, insects, fish, and anything else small and edible in the mud and the muck. Always wary of larger enemies, it often stands to peer at its surroundings, swiveling its head back and forth. When alarmed it raises a fleshy crest over each side of its skull, a visual signal to any others around - usually only a single mate, or at times up to two chicks - that means to run or to hide (the little ones cower and blend in to their surroundings for the first few weeks before they are able to keep pace with the adults.) Though the adult striped strilt is striped to help hide it among reeds and grass tussocks just as its name indicates, the chick's camouflage is superior and almost exactly matches a muddy streambank lined with sticks, leaves and other debris, often letting it remain unseen even directly under the nose of a predator. Though the parents don't work together to hunt and seem to have little attachment to one another except during mating, they both feed the chick and partake in its protection, and both male and female will lure away a predator from their young with an elaborate display of feigned injury where they seem to have broken a leg, only to "heal" at the last moment and leap away to safety, by which time they have led danger away from their vulnerable offspring.

Only female striped strilts brood their egg, and only one is incubated at a time. Yet pairs of these little lumps are often attended by two chicks at a time, which are noticeably different in age. As soon as one hatches, the female is likely to lay a second egg, and so this is a rare trunko in which two young of different litters are raised at the same time. The first chick will be around three months old by the time the second leaves the pouch, and will be much faster and less vulnerable to predation. So stark is the difference that sometimes an older sibling will instinctively show parental behavior to the baby, providing it with some of its food, even as it itself still depends on its parents for its own meals! Yet there is also a less heartwarming benefit to the striped strilt staggering its litters so as to always have one chick older and one more dependent; it lets the older chick always survive predation simply by being able to outrun its younger brother or sister, in the event the adult's deceptive display doesn't work to distract it. If both chicks were the same age and a predator were to attack them, it would be more likely both would be killed at the same time. This mixed-aged way of raising a family is common to many strilts, and in the larger species with more prolonged childhoods, up to five young may accompany their parents at any one point in time, from newborns to subadults that act as additional caretakers to the rest in extended family structures.