I posted this for no reason other than personal ones, so you might as well enjoy it:

"Note: I said on Spec's yahoo club I wouldn't post more essays there till the next year, but nothing stops me from posting some in DA

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Spec's avifauna is remarkably different from HE's. Besides Neornithes, older groups like Xenornithes, Enantiornithes, Ichthyornithes and Hesperornithes are still alive, occupying several ecological niches reserved for Neornithe groups in HE. Within Neornithes itself things are also quite different; many groups never evolved in Spec, having their niches taken by the most diverse bird species, Euornithe or not. And even when familiar birds are Neornithes, the ecological niches are taken by clades unlike HE's; for instance, neither turacos, rails and shorebirds evolved in Spec, and while their niches are taken by Neornithes these are, respectively, Galliformes and Paleognaths.

One particular group of unusual is Odontopterygiformes. This clade is composed of a menagerie of bird clades, some externally divergent from each other quite much, but all more or less associated with aquatic niches with secondarily terrestrial forms. The clade's name comes from its HE representatives, the massive pelagornithids, which had teeth like serrations; this is quite of a misnamer, because most of Spec's forms sans Pelagornithidae itself have serration less beaks. These birds are part of a wider group known as Galloanserae, which also includes Anseriformes and Galliformes; unlike either group, which is mostly composed of omnivorous and herbivorous forms, this one is primarily carnivorous, with all species feeding on animal prey. The group evolved in the south hemisphere, having diverged from screamer like ancestors; whereas in our world they took over the niches of large oceanic fliers, in this one they remained somewhat more conservative, thanks to the presence of toothed seabirds and nyctosaurid pterosaurs. In a way, this benefited them as they remained in fairly unspecialised niches and survived, though needless to say that they still managed to produce noticeable forms.

Parachionis

Just like in HE, Antartica is home to white, mostly terrestrial birds that scavenge along the shores instead of fishing in the seas. While on HE said birds are related to shorebirds and seagulls, in Spec they are the most basal living odontopterygiforme, but in many respects there's hardly any distinction in terms of external appearence of behaviour. Otherworld shealthbills are more diverse than HE's however, with species occuring in southern South America, Tasmania, New Zealand, and any islands in the southern oceans as far north as Easter Island. One species, the Galapagos Sheathbill (P. darwinensis) occurs obviously in those islands, and alongside the biggest of the two New Zealand species (P. aumallae), is flightless."

To be continued in a following deviation