#cariamiform

[vickysaurus-art]

On the edge of a Miocene South American grassland, a group of Thoatherium is ambushed by a Phorusrhacos. They scatter, but the terror bird catches one of the litopterns, lifts it high up into the air, and SLAMS it down on the ground to kill it. Other nearby animals have mixed feelings about this situation. Tupinambis flees for its life, while Dryornis flies a little closer in case it can have a bit for itself. Hapalops and Astrapotherium are unbothered and have business of their own to take care of.

[vickysaurus]

So I’m researching seriema feet because I just cannot seem to get the terror bird’s feet right in the watercolour I’m working on, and I came across THIS fucker. Like what on Earth. Seriema. seriema plz. Why are you like this? The worst part is that since those are in fact their ankles, this is basically a seriema just touching their entire feet to the ground like a human, going ‘this is what you look like’.

[herpsandbirds]

Red-legged Seriema (Cariama cristata), family Cariamidae, order Cariamiformes, found in central and eastern South America

Seriemas were once placed in the Gruiformes, but in 2014 were elevated to their own order. They are most closely related to Falconidae, Psittaciformes and Passeriformes.

They are territorial, and some people ion South America use them as guard animals.

Seriemas eat a wide variety of small prey, and are known to pick up snakes with their beaks and slam them hard onto the ground repeatedly, to subdue/kill them.

photographs by João Menezes, Silvia Faustino Linhares, Brian Henderson, Manfred Warner, & Stephan Lorenz

[alphynix]

April Fools 2023: How Titanis Lost The Right To Bear Arms

Huge, flightless, and carnivorous, the phorusrhacids (or terror birds) were some of the largest apex predators in South America during its Cenozoic "splendid isolation" as an island continent – and they were possibly the closest that birds ever came to reclaiming the ecological roles of their extinct non-avian theropod dinosaur relatives. 

And for a while in the late 1990s and early 2000s there was a hypothesis that they'd even re-evolved clawed hands.

This idea was based on the wing bones of Titanis walleri, the only terror bird known to have dispersed northwards during the Great American Biotic Interchange when North and South America became connected via the Isthmus of Panama.

Living during the Pliocene and Pleistocene in Florida and Texas, between about 5 and 1.8 million years ago, Titanis stood around 1.5-1.8m tall (~5-6') and was heavily built, with long strong legs and a massive hooked beak. Remains of its small wings were incomplete and fragmentary but had seemingly unusual joints, with what looked like a stiffer wrist and more flexible "fingers" than other birds, which led paleontologist Robert Chandler to propose in 1994 that this terror bird species had modified its wings into clawed grasping arms similar to those of dromaeosaurs, used to restrain prey animals while its beak tore them apart.

But the idea of a giant murder-bird with added meathook-hands only lasted about a decade. Further investigation in 2005 showed that Titanis' arms weren't that weird after all – the same sort of joints are found in terror birds' closest living relatives, the seriemas, and so Titanis really had the same sort of small vestigial wings as many other large flightless birds.

…However, there still could have been some claws on there. Many modern birds actually have one or two small claws on their hands that aren't visible under their feathers, and terror birds like Titanis having something like that going on is completely plausible – they just wouldn't have been using them for any sort of specalized predatory function.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[haveyouseenthisbirdpoll]

photo source

[alonglistofbirds]

[1224/10977] Black-legged Seriema - Chunga burmeisteri

Order: Cariamiformes Family: Cariamidae (seriemas)

Photo credit: Trevor Ellery via Macaulay Library

[kosssich]

whoa! Big post! Scary! But still, please check it out! It has pictures :)

So before I continue my papa Adam staff and sisters exorcists I want to settle some of my headcanons on them + heaven in general (including some redesigns)

Birds of prey AU

How were exorcists created.

- Hell was growing. So was its power. Heaven began to feel threatened by Lilith and her kingdom.

- So they decided they needed protection. Seraphims wanted to create an invincible army to protect the citizens of Spheres. Army that would consist of utterly loyal soldiers.

- Exorcists were created in the likeness of birds of prey - beautiful, vicious and smart.

- Exorcist weren’t exactly a heavenborns. Technically, they were never born. They were created. But still, they’re not robots. Actually, all of them have personalities. Their own wishes, dreams and thoughts. But one thing they have - never doubt Heaven and orders. Never doubt Adam. They can question a lot of stuff in their lives, but never Heaven.

- They don’t have compassion, they don’t show mercy. They are supposed to be baby soldiers.

- Magic of Lilith can slip through Pearly Gates. And one of the newfound army was affected by that. One of the nestlings - so different from others - was created with a curse and a blessing - it was given the free will. A will to question, a will to show compassion, a will to seek knowledge and a will to have soul.

- Sera and Adam had their doubts about Vaggie, but decided to keep her, so the only thing left was to keep an eye on the broken child, preventing her from turning against Heaven.

Exorcists species.

For exorcists were created in the likeness of birds of prey, they vary from each other.

They have their own strengths and weaknesses. Their wings are different as well, they may look alike, but they function differently.

There’s only three exorcists who have different necklaces from the others - Vaggie, Lute and the killed one, so I decided to go with this number three.

I chose these three different orders of birds of prey:

1. Falconiformes - different species of falcons - really fast, agile, perfect eyesight.

2. Accipitriformes - hawks and eagles - strong, fast, vicious, perfect eyesight.

3. Strigiformes - owls - not as fast as other birds, but they can fly completely silent, perfect assassins, agile, perfect eyesight and perfect hearing as well.

No Cariamiformes, because they can’t fly, sorry birdies 😔

Vaggie is the only specie of Tytonidae, just to prove how different she is.

Other exorcists belonging to owls is species from Strigidae family.

- I have a headcanon, that Heaven is very technically advanced (we saw a glimpses of Heaven architecture and they had this cool looking microchips on the floor, LED masks, cool stuff). Whatever Vox is doing, Heaven is steps ahead. So I wanted to recreate this headcanon in exorcists redesign (don’t get me wrong, I like the original design, I do get that they supposed to look like demons with their horns, all grey and black, and like crusaders with this chain mail, yeah yeah yeah, but I like birds more).

- So, the exorcists army divided into three squads - hawks and eagles under Lute’s command, owls under Vaggie’s command and falcons under Dead exorcist command. And Adam is Harpy Eagle - the largest eagle and one of the kind.

- Exorcist are used for service in Heaven - babysitting, escorts to the other Spheres, guards, it’s not like Heaven needs guards, but my imagination ends here lol. It’s just, not like they need to train all 365 days a year.

- Winners know about exorcists, but not about the extermination. They know Hell and its threat, so Heaven never hides the information about its army.

- Exorcists can be killed and they know that. But they still act like they’re invincible, because in some way, they really are.

- An exorcist can be killed in two ways:

1. By other angels with angelic steel.

2. By sinners and hellborns with angelic steel.

3. But the difficulty - to kill an angel you need to rip off their halo. If the sinner or a hellborn touches a halo, they will just burn alive, killed by holy flames. (They tried to kill exorcists, didn’t work). Exorcists always fly. They never step on Hells ground. Always in the sky, deadly and unpredictable.

- They’re not stupid. They don’t leave their weapon in dead bodies. They don’t need sinners to have angelic steel. But still, steel can be gathered from arrows and bullets mostly - it’s a hard and dirty work to dig through all the bodies just to find a few bullets. This is exactly why Carmine’s angelic weapon is insanely expensive and difficult to get.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

So it turns out Terror Birds/Cariamiformes are, in every possible sense, "Dromaeosaurs 2: The Quickening"

[otussketching]

Fossil Novembirb: Day 2 - The Survivors

Birds survived the catastrophic End-Cretaceous extinction event, but only by the skin of their beaks. Only a handful of bird species were able to make it. And for the few survivors, the slowly healing world was full of opportunity. They started to expand their ranges and ecological niches, and started to diversify in an exponential rate.

Tsidiiyazhi: The first known mousebird, and one of the earliest known perching birds, or telluraves. Known from New Mexico.

Qinornis: A peculiar flighted ground bird known from China. It might be the only stem-bird to have survived the K/Pg extinction event.

Australornis: A probable relative of Vegavis, a small diving seabird known from Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Conflicto: A large wading waterfowl, related to ducks and geese, and resembling presbyornithids (Flamingo-ducks). Known from Antarctica.

Qiashanornis: One of the earliest known Cariamiformes (seriemas, terror birds and kin) found in China. It had grasping talons to catch small prey.

[sagaedling]

Qianshanornis

It’s so hard to imagine what an animal looks like with only some feet to go off of, but I’m repeatedly in awe of how scientists can get so much information out of just a few fossilised bones.

Sources and stuff under the cut.

Most facts come from this article:

Gerald Mayr , Jian Yang , Eric De Bast , Cheng-Sen Li & Thierry Smith (2013): A Strigogyps-like bird from the middle Paleocene of China with an unusual grasping foot, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 33:4, 895-901

I’ve also looked at some paleoart for reference:

“The other terror birds - Cariamiformes” by Artbyjrc (Deviantart)

@alphynix’s illustration of Qianshanornis

I’ve also looked at a lot of pictures of seriemas for this. It’s basically a seriema with funky feet tbh…

[worldsandemanations]

Red-legged Seriema (Cariama cristata), family Cariamidae, order Cariamiformes, Pantanal, Brazil photograph by Djamel Milano

[herpsandbirds]

Red-legged Seriema (Cariama cristata), family Cariamidae, order Cariamiformes, Uruguay

Seriemas were once placed in the Gruiformes, but in 2014 were elevated to their own order. They are most closely related to Falconidae, Psittaciformes and Passeriformes.

They are territorial, and some people ion South America use them as guard animals.

Seriemas eat a wide variety of small prey, and are known to pick up snakes with their beaks and slam them hard onto the ground repeatedly, to subdue/kill them.

photograph by Silvia Viazzo

[birdbracket]

The Great Bird Order Bracket

Tumblr user @satellite-juice​ here. Yesterday I made a poll asking user to chose their favorite order of class Aves, and apparently upset some people by omitting their favorite order. I realized that 10 options is not enough. So I made a bracket of 20 orders of birds.

If your favorite is still not on the list, sorry, but whine about it to me and get blocked.

Round 1 voting will begin at 12AM EST February 13.

Matchups are:

Galliformes v. Columbiformes (Winner v. Passeriformes)

Psittaciformes v. Strigiformes

Suliformes v. Anseriformes

Accipitriformes v. Falconiformes (Winner v. Sphenisciformes)

Pelecaniformes v. Coraciiformes (Winner v. Bucerotiformes)

Gruiformes v. Apodiformes

Gaviiformes v. Piciformes

Charadriiformes v. Musophagiformes (Winner v. Cariamiformes)

[haveyouseenthisbirdpoll]

List of Birds organized by Order + locations:

Accipitriformes:

Bearded vulture

Cooper's hawk

Osprey

Red-shouldered hawk

Steller's sea eagle

Anseriformes:

Bar-headed goose

Barnacle goose

Black swan

Common merganser

Red-breasted goose

Snow goose

Trumpeter swan

Apodiformes:

Common swift

Ruby-throated hummingbird

Bucerotiformes:

Eurasian hoopoe

Cariamiformes:

Red-legged seriema

Casuariiformes:

Emu

Southern cassowary

Cathartiformes:

Black vulture

Turkey vulture

Charadriiformes:

American oystercatcher

Atlantic puffin

Black-headed gull

Black skimmer

Black-tailed godwit

European herring gull

Killdeer

Northern lapwing

Ruddy turnstone

Ciconiiformes:

White stork

Columbiformes:

Common wood pigeon

Eurasian collared dove

Luzon bleeding-heart

Nicobar pigeon

Victoria crowned pigeon

Coraciiformes:

Blue-capped kingfisher

Common kingfisher

Cuculiformes:

Asian koel

Greater roadrunner

Yellow-billed cuckoo

Eurypygiformes:

Kagu

Falconiformes:

American kestrel

Common kestrel

Galliformes:

Palawan peacock-pheasant

Scaled quail

Western capercaillie

Gaviiformes:

Common loon

Gruiformes:

American coot

Australasian swamphen/pūkeko

Blue crane

Common moorhen

Sandhill crane

Sora

Whooping crane

Passeriformes:

American bushtit

American robin

Australian raven

Baltimore oriole

Barn swallow

Black-billed magpie

Black-capped chickadee

Black-throated sparrow

Blue-headed vireo

Blue jay

Bluethroat

Brown thrasher

California towhee

Canada warbler

Canyon wren

Cedar waxwing

Common blackbird

Common chlorospingus

Common raven

Eastern wood pewee

Eurasian blue tit

Eurasian bullfinch

Eurasian golden oriole

Eurasian jay

Eurasian magpie

European robin

Goldcrest

Great-tailed grackle

Great tit

Hooded crow

House sparrow

Indigo bunting

Kirtland's warbler

LeConte's sparrow

Long-tailed tit

Mexican jay

Painted bunting

Phainopepla

Pine siskin

Pin-tailed whydah

Pinyon jay

Pygmy nuthatch

Red winged blackbird

Rook

Saltmarsh sparrow

Satin bowerbird

Spotted towhee

Steller's jay

Tufted titmouse

Wallcreeper

Warbling vireo

Western tanager

White-breasted nuthatch

White-throated dipper

White-throated magpie-jay

Yellow-rumped warbler

Pelecaniformes:

Brown pelican

Great blue heron

Great egret

Great white pelican

Least bittern

Roseate spoonbill

Shoebill stork

Snowy egret

Phoenicopteriformes:

American flamingo

Chilean flamingo

Piciformes:

Acorn woodpecker

Clark's nutcracker

Lewis's woodpecker

Northern flicker

Pileated woodpecker

Red-bellied woodpecker

Red-headed woodpecker

Podargiformes:

Tawny frogmouth

Podicipediformes:

Pied-billed grebe

Procellariiformes:

Wilson's storm-petrel

Psittaciformes:

Australian king parrot

Chestnut-fronted macaw

Citron-crested cockatoo

Cockatiel

Galah

Gang-gang cockatoo

Pacific parrotlet

Rose-ringed parakeet

Sulphur-crested cockatoo

Strigiformes:

Barn owl

Barred owl

Eurasian eagle-owl

Suliformes:

Anhinga

Blue-footed booby

Double-crested cormorant

Trogoniformes:

Elegant trogon

Locations:

Africa

America

Antarctica

Asia

Australia

Central America

Eurasia

Europe

North America

Oceania

South America

[alonglistofbirds]

First 25% Summary - Part 1 (Accipitriformes to Coraciiformes)

Accipitriformes: Bicolored hawk - Brendan Fogarty Aegotheliformes: Australian owlet-nightjar - Jack Nguyen Anseriformes: African pygmy goose - John Mills Apodiformes: Black-breasted hillstar - David F. Belmonte Bucerotiformes: Abyssinian scimitarbill - Dubi Shapiro Caprimulgiformes: Antillean nighthawk - Homer Gardin Cariamiformes: Black-legged seriema - Trevor Ellery Charadriiformes: Chatham oystercatcher - Lars Petersson Ciconiiformes: Black stork - Marco Valentini Coliiformes: Blue-naped mousebird - Roger Adamson Columbiformes: Carribean dove - Shailesh Pinto Coraciiformes: Azure kingfisher - David Irving

[covenawhite66]

The extinct Phorusrhacid, commonly known as terror birds. Phorusrhacid is a type of Cariamiformes an order of mainly terrestrial birds.

Found in Seymour Island in West Antarctica, on its La Meseta Formation.

These phalanges belonged to a large or even giant predator, estimated to have had a substantial body mass of around 100 kg.

The taxonomic assignment of the fossils was made following a thorough comparison with representatives of different orders of birds.