Ruddy Hawklette

Lately, a rather old group of aerial binucleids has been gaining new diversity, and this hasn’t left some of their closest relatives in the air unaffected. The Sruglettes are a fairly new group of flying fauna, even compared to the Srugeing which had only evolved a few million years ago. They have still been rather limited in their niches, being first and foremost mid-air hunters of small fauna and not managing much else, until now, that is. With the advent of many new diverse genera of flying Wingworms (ironically a much older lineage than the Surge Gilltails as a whole), the Sruglettes had both new competition and new potential prey items. One lineage had begun to become a bit bigger though, and began to hunt larger prey items in turn.

The Ruddy Hawklette has multiple adaptations to facilitate this macropredatory lifestyle, with a raptorial hooked beak and strong jaw muscles to go with them. Not to mention their much larger body size, which allows them to tackle much larger prey as well. Perhaps one of the most impressive feats that the Ruddy Hawklette manages is the hunting of young Songsauce Pipers, repetitively crushing their bodies in its strong beak while it drowns them by repeatedly bobbing up and down in the water as it does with other large prey like Dragonworms and larger Sruglettes. Smaller prey is most often swallowed whole mid-air as it is caught. The Ruddy Hawklette is quite fond of Wingworm prey, even chasing down stinkers as it lacks an advanced olfactory system and its tastebuds aren’t particularly sensitive, and being mostly too fast and agile for the predators that would usually find it by smell after it gets stung by one of the worms.

Also of note is an enlarged section of fin ray in the wings, acting analogously to the pterostigma of some Terran insects, most relevantly dragonflies, allowing the Ruddy Hawklette to glide for some distance without being interrupted by wing flutter; this function is important not only for hunting and conserving energy in flight, but also is somewhat important for their reproduction, which will be covered later.

The Ruddy Hawklette is surprisingly lacking in its own predators, likely due to its roughly intermediate size (too small to be a worthy target for the Coastwoodufo, too large to be hunted by Interbiats or predatory Wingworms) and agility, often flitting about much like a dragonfly even through the fairly dense rainforest and over the wetlands. Its young, on the other hand, do not have such a luxury, being born small and vulnerable from eggs deposited during a rather messy spawning ritual. The adult Ruddy Hawklettes will pair up and then skim the water alongside each other, mixing the eggs and milt around by wiggling their tail fins as they do so. The eggs will rest scattered in loose lines on the muddy riverbed (though they will lay them in smaller bodies of water like ponds as well, the ecological standpoint provided applies to the Northern Terra Tropical River and Ichthy Tropical River due to their permanency) and eventually hatch after a matter of days, the fry being rather large and well-developed, which is important for the next step in their survival. They start out transparent, seeking out the distinctive scent of Snotflora, Marbleflora, or Toxiglobes and gorging themselves on them. Rather than being fatally poisoned by this dietary choice, the larvae incorporate the toxins of these flora into their flesh, eventually turning a bright red as they mature further to advertise their acquired toxicity to predators like the Wadesnapper or Netoris Ukjaw, albeit many are still consumed as they are still rather small and contain low concentrations of the toxins. As they reach a larger size however, they experience much less of this predation, as they become significantly toxic from their time of feeding on the poisonous flora. Upon reaching this stage, they become much more generalist, consuming a wider range of flora and beginning to hunt down fauna to fuel their rapid growth.

Indeed, by only their fourth week of life, these “harings” may be seen leaping out of the water and flapping their pectoral fins in short glides, preparing their wing muscles for an adult life of nearly constant flight; their development does slow quite a bit in regards to size by this time however. Regardless of the reduction in size increase, they will still become mostly free of the water by the seventh week, buzzing along through the forest like their parents, who will most likely indeed happen to meet them, as Ruddy Hawklettes do have a fairly long lifespan (for a Sruglette) of 4 or so Saganian years; which is fairly easy for them to attain as they are not limited by a temperate climate and are a good bit larger than most other species in their genus, as well as the aforementioned disturbing lack of significant predators. It should be noted that adult Ruddy Hawklettes are mostly non-toxic, and contain either negligible amounts of or no toxins in their flesh due to the fact that, for obvious reasons, adult Ruddy Hawklettes are no longer consuming the toxic flora that they would obtain these poisons from.