25 Million Years PE
Predatory Birds
The Tempuscenic era sees continued diversification of avian carnivores.
Falconaries, a clade of mostly flying predatory birds falling under the order Falconara, have speciated considerably since the Hypostecene and now number approximately 450 species spread worldwide, the smallest just an ounce in weight and the largest approximately the weight and stature of the extinct Haast's eagle. Physiologically they are extremely convergent to true falcons and kill prey, which can range from insects through aardgeese, with their hooked beaks and/or their curved talons. A sub-order, the Ululava - known as Bubirds, hunts by night with oversized eyes and particularly wide frog-like mouths, often swallowing their prey whole. Close relatives are the Shrike Finches, Pugnaxornithes, a cosmopolitan lineage of adaptable and predatory or omnivorous generalists similar to crows, rooks, and true shrikes that descends from the shriekers. Not as specialized as the true falconaries at active predation, they more readily pilfer nests, hunt insects, and consume carrion.
Tyrant serins, Tyrannoserinae, the descendants of the early predators known as skykes and before them the primitive axbills of the early Hypostecene, which were very similar to the ancestral aardgoose. Though distantly related as Dromaeoserins, tyrant serins have gone down a polar opposite evolutionary path and have become the largest terrestrial carnivores of the Tempuscenic era, with genera present in both the east and the west. They now reach sizes of up to nine-hundred pounds and thirteen feet in height and kill with their giant, sharply-hooked bill, which features a razor-sharp cutting "tooth" on either side to cut through bones and ligaments. Tyrant serins are social, hunting in pairs or large and coordinated packs to bring down the largest of ground birds, particularly the aardgeese. Their offspring are precocial, well-feathered in warm down and able to run at birth, but they cannot hunt for themselves for several months and rely on their parents' kills for the first year of their life. When six months old, they begin to shed their down and take on their adult feathers and join in active hunting and assist their parents, but they will then not develop adult coloration for more than a year or be self-sufficient until that time. Tyrant serins are either lifelong monogames or serial ones, picking new partners each season. In pack-hunting species, the pack usually consists of an alpha male and female and their offspring, plus young males brought in from other packs, with only the alpha pair reproducing and the other serins assisting in bringing up the young. Nesting is typical for ground birds, with incubation often done right out in the open in a basic scrape in the Earth, for the largest tyrant serins have no predators of their own. Tyrant serins engage in social singing, usually by night, which serves to affirm pack bonds and keep distant pack members in contact, similarly to the howls of wolves. Their songs remain complex and varied motifs, both genders engage in it, and no two individuals sing identically. Close relatives of the tyrant serins are the Susopterinae, the hogbirds. Less predatory than tyrant serins, they are similar to the common ancestor of both clades, the axbills, and comprise a diverse suborder of omnivores with large and sometimes ornamented bills equally suited to crushing seeds, fruit, and nuts as skulls, flesh, and bones.
Pelicanaries, Pelicanarinae, are a lineage of seabird descended from the duck-like dougals of the Hypostecenic. They are all almost completely aquatic and flightless, with large paddle-like wings and reduced webbed hind legs situated far back on the body. All species exhibit a pronounced pouch on the underside of the bill which is used to hold fish, but several especially large species of this lineage have also adopted a very unique trait: they incubate their own eggs within these pouches, with the male and female taking turns sitting at the surface to guard the egg. The pouch is well-vascularized with blood vessels and the relatively large egg, situated in the back near the throat, stays warm, dry, and oxygenated in this makeshift incubator while allowing the adults to completely avoid coming to shore to breed, where they risk numerous predators and competitors on crowded beaches. Pelicanarian mouth-brooding originates from a long process that began with grebe-like ancestors building crude nests in shallow bays out of floating vegetation. This situation provided an environment with fewer competitors and predators than on shore, but the egg was always at risk of falling into the water; subsequently, it became more buoyant, with a larger air pocket and a waxy eggshell cuticle less easily permeated by seawater. The adult birds simultaneously evolved to quickly grab and retrieve the egg in their throat pouch if it strayed from the nest in a wave. Eventually this gave rise to dorsal incubation, in which the nest was done away with entirely and the egg was incubated on the low, flat back of the adult, covered by the neck plumage and warm skin of the bare throat pouch to keep warm, a practice still used by many pelicanarians today. Eventually from there, true mouth brooding was achieved when the parents simply engulfed the egg in the pouch and kept it there at all times, safe from outside threats. As a result of their recently-cut ties to land and terrestrial incubation, mouth-brooding pelicanaries are extremely large seabirds that can no longer walk out of water, some weighing upwards of three thousand pounds and stretching twenty-five feet long, counting their necks which can in some species be almost half their total length. They are most often deep divers, pursuing open water fish and crustaceans, but shallow water specialists exist which feed on molluscs and invertebrates living in the shallow sediment of coastal waters. All species are monogamous, for their reproductive methods rely on cooperation, one partner watching the egg while the other feeds.