Dreaded Bugbear

The dreaded bugbear split from its ancestor, the needlewing, and spread into the surrounding boreal regions. They have taken on a semi-nocturnal method of living, typically active during dusk or sunset until midnight, disappearing in the early morning until next evening. Their visibly eyes are nearly all pupil, and their eyes have developed tapetum lucidum for increased ability to see in the dim light of the evening and night.

Hunting is perform mainly by scratching away at leaf litter with their feet and beak, and quickly slurping up prey with their tongue. They may pry open rotten logs, or poke around with their beak in deep leaf litter to search for prey as well. Prey may experience simple mastication toward the back of the beak, before being swallowed.

The skin of the Dreaded Bugbear is very wrinkly, it's a combination of fatty tissues and excess skin growth with some fluid underneath. This provides more energy reserve space and more malleable thicker skin less likely to take severe damage during an attack. It also replicates the skin of the poisonous wood wraith, though lacking any deadly poisons itself.

Mimicry has actually driven a lot of developments in their body. Their front limbs have become broad and paddle-like for the purpose of replicating ballooning limbs. The ends, however, lead to sharp hardened thorns used for defense as well as side swiping during jousting between combatants. Several parts of their body are marked with blue spots to further their caricature of a wood wraith, these markings are created using rayleigh scattering. The ends of their wings have blue as well, though this is a true pigment derived from chlorophyll. Their wings have fused their needles into thin green strips, with the supportive length thickening and becoming woody. Though they can be clacked together to make sound this isn't normally don't, and if it is there's no rhyme or reason to it.

The butt nostril is adorned with a handful of long needle sharp splinters of wood. These can number up to seven, fewer being more normal, and are individually shed and replaced over time. Behind the legs and beneath the butt nostril is a bump of tissue in which a concentration of gland-like tiny bladders may be found. They're similar to the deeper workings of the typical plent excretory pores, which can still be found throughout the skin of the Dreaded Bugbear, though these bladders are larger and more elongate.

The inner end of a bladder forms a small partial chamber, into which their nephrons lead. The tissue alongside the nephron contributes to the tube contents, seeping a cocktail of simple odorous lipids and thiols into the stream. This occurs to the other more typical nephrons, but at far lower activity. The outer end of the bladder forms the majority of the organ, a long barrel stuffed up against others, with the bundle wrapped with muscle. This muscle squeezes the entire structure to rapidly squirt out it's contents through multiple pores. This is unleashed on would-be predators or perceived dangers, including one unfortunate Naucean plent enthusiast.

Dreaded Bugbears have loose territories that they maintain for a few weeks to a year which they defend as mated pairs before abandoning it and ambling off to establish a new one. In these territories they will dig shallow burrows to sleep in during the day. If an intruder is discovered in their territory the pair will confront it aggressively. They will flash their large front limbs, displaying their thorns, coincidentally reminiscent of the displays performed by wood wraiths. If their threat isn't heeded they will rush their target and slash across them. The thick skin of the species gives some opportunity for the assaulted to escape without too serious of injury if taken early. If not then they may lose an eye, or the cuts will deepen.

They prefer residing near or in the territories of wood wraiths, being drawn into the area by the curious songs their relatives sing. However they take care to avoid the strange looking source, both due to the presence of a somewhat large and eerie looking competitor when they find it, and the very real aggression it displays for the same reason; a slightly smaller eerie looking intruder suddenly approaching them. This balancing act of proximity benefits the Dreaded Bugbear through furthering association by predators with what it mimics.

Offspring are reared similarly to it's ancestor. Females continuing to carry their young in their pouch for a period of time, while the male collects food for both. After expulsion from the pouch the young will remain with their parents until next spring, at which point they will wander away in search of a mate to repeat the cycle with, or die.