Martyk Mega Quail

The Martyk mega quail split from its ancestor. In the Martyk archipelago where competition was more sparse, it rapidly grew in size through the process of island gigantism. Being able to fly using wings which were also legs gave it an edge over the other local species that might have become large herbivores in the archipelago. Unlike real world birds and insects and Sagan 4’s own phlyers, wingworms, skysnappers, gliding pinyuks, and the majority of other volant creatures on the planet, flying saucebacks walk and fly with the same appendages. This means that unlike most organisms which can lose flight in a few short mutations, flying saucebacks cannot easily do so without also affecting their ability to walk. As such, loss of flight never became advantageous enough, so the Martyk mega quail retained it, and in fact became one of the better fliers among saucebacks.

As a result of keeping its flight, the Martyk mega quail can quickly and easily travel between islands using thermal soaring and isn’t doomed to extinction when an island sinks. To support a more volant lifestyle, its tail dramatically shortened; in fact, in just a few mutations, everything past its lungs was deleted entirely, including its tail fan and spikes, causing its tail to simply abruptly stop with a blunt taper, as though it had been cut off and healed. It primarily uses its ears for stabilization, unlike most flying saucebacks which use either their tails or both. Like other flying saucebacks, its hip socket is open and upturned, which makes standing up cost more energy than it would for non-flying saucebacks, but as it is very lightweight, this is not a problem at its size. It has lost echolocation, as vast stretches of darkness do not completely cover the islands and it is, physically, generally more suited to wandering clearings and otherwise sparse stretches of forest with lots of light.

The Martyk mega quail’s sauce plate and ceres are often covered by its contour feathers, which keeps it warm in the temperate winters. To keep air entering its microlungs fresh, the feather cover is not complete and creates a sort of tunnel which opens at the end of its tail. In the heat of summer, it can cool itself off by spreading its feathers to expose its back. Like other flying saucebacks, beneath its contour feathers, it has a layer of downy feathers. These keep it warm in the winter. It has summer and winter downy coats, which molt in the spring and fall and have to be preened out.

Being a large flighted herbivore has some disadvantages for herbivory. The Martyk mega quail cannot invest in a large gut or else it will be too heavy to fly. As a result, though it does have a fermenting gut which can process tree leaves, it is too small to support a tree leaf-only diet, so it prefers softer herbs, fruit, and crystal flesh. It clips most flora with its beak-like mandibles, and it is able to break into crystals by kicking them with its hooves, generally limiting it to shorter broad-crystal species. In the absence of usable grinding teeth, it grinds up the flora it eats using gastroliths in a gizzard instead. It does not consume tubeplage fruits, as their acid can wear down its gastroliths. Though not aquatic, during low tide it will sometimes wander the beach and consume often-easy-to-digest aquatic flora, especially floating flora such as colonialballs which have been stranded on the sand.

Like its ancestor, the Martyk mega quail nests on the ground. Unlike its ancestor, it does so communally, as lack of space makes this necessary. It nests in the summer on warm beaches along the edges of the island forests and is fiercely protective of its eggs and young, using its hooves to bash in the brains of beach-dwelling potential predators. Its offspring hatch flightless but already capable of running, and they gain their flight feathers quickly, allowing them to follow their parents into the sky within about a month of hatching. Young individuals cannot digest tough tree leaves and mostly eat fruit and herbs. They reach maturity in roughly three years.