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Common Visorbill (Plumatibia diaspeirus)
{Feathered-flute (Latin) Scattered-around (Latinized Greek i.e. diaspora)}

Creator: Jarlaxle
Ancestor: Songsauce Piper
Habitat: Clayren Temperate Rainforest Archipelago, Lamarck Temperate Rainforest, Lamarck Subtropical Rainforest, Ittiz Temperate Rainforest Archipelago, Abello Temperate Rainforest Archipelago, Anguan Temperate Woodland Archipelago, Barlowe Temperate Rainforest, Barlowe Temperate Woodland, Barlowe Subtropical Rainforest, Time Subtropical Rainforest Archipelago, Dixon Subtropical Rainforest, Dixon Subtropical Woodland, West Wallace Tropical Woodland, Dorite Subtropical Woodland, Central Wallace Tropical Woodland, Darwin Subtropical Rainforest, Drake Temperate Woodland, Soma Temperate Rainforest Archipelago, Dingus Temperate Rainforest, Dingus Temperate Woodland, Ramul Subtropical Woodland, Ramul Subtropical Woodland Archipelago, Steiner Subtropical Rainforest Archipelago, Barlowe Tropical Rainforest, Raptor Tropical Rainforest, Wallace Tropical Rainforest, Darwin Tropical Woodland, Darwin Tropical Rainforest, Steiner Tropical Rainforest Archipelago, Steiner Tropical Rainforest, Vonnegut Temperate Woodland Archipelago, Fermi Temperate Woodland, South Darwin Subtropical Woodland, Darwin Temperate Woodlands, Martyk Temperate Woodland Archipelago, Koseman Temperate Woodland, Koseman Temperate Rainforest
{2 Flavors (Rainforests, Woodlands), 3 Types (Tropical, Subtropical, Temperate)}
Size: 22 cm long
Support: Endoskeleton (Chitin)
Diet: Omnivore (Berry Arbourshroom (Berries), Blood Tropofly, Bora Scuttler, Boreal Tubeplage (Fruit), Borinvermee, Branching Qupe Tree (Fruit), Brutishelm Uksip, Carnofern Flugwurm, Carnossamer (Fruit), Chasing Twintail (Juveniles), Cleaner Borvermid, Cloud Swarmer, Cloudbubble, Cloudgrass, Cloudswarmers, Cobalt Lillyworm (Juveniles), Communal Janit, Corkscrew Krugg, Cragmyr (Berries), Creab Walker, Crysfortress Walker, Dragonworms, Eggslurping Sorite, Exoskelesor (Juveniles), False Cleaner Borvermid, Feroak (Berries), Ferries (Berries), Flesh Fairy, Fourmaw Sauceback, Frayedspikes (Fruit), Fruiting Grovecrystal (Fruit), Fuzzpile (Berries), Glideabovi, Greatcap Baseejie (Fruit), Grub Krugg, Gryphler (Juveniles), Gundiseater, Gushitos, Hair Nimbuses, Hanging Olshkra, Hemoswarmer, Herbivorous Tropoworm, Hydrabowl, Infilt Pewpa, Kehaida (Juveniles), Lazarus Soriparasite, Leaping Soriparasite, Leepi Meepi, Logworm Sauceback, Lungworm Clogmane (Adults), Lurcreeper (Seeds), Lurspire (Fruit), Lurtress (Seeds), Mainland Fuzzpalm (Berries), Marblora, Minibees, Minizap, Mudfish, Nectar Crystalworm, Nectarsnapper, Nightcrawler Borvermid, Olshkra, Omnivore (Barnline (Fruit), Osziza, Parasitic Floats, Penumbra Fuzzpalm (Berries), Plumottle, Quhft (Fruit), Quilbil (Berries), Qupe Tree (Fruit), Rainforest Carnofern (Fruit), Sauceswarmer, Scrambled Shrew (Juveniles), Scrubland Tubeplage (Fruit), Shaggy Volleypom (Megaspores), Sky Bloodbee, Sleeve Ferine (Berries), Smirking Soriparasite, Soricinus, Spectresnatch (Juveniles), Sruglettes, Stowaway Harmbless (Juveniles), Sweetworms, Syrup Ferine (Berries), Teacup Saucebacks, Tlukvaequabora (Berries), Tropical Gecoba Tree (Fruit), Tropoworm, Tubeplage (Fruit), Tusovendis (Seeds), Tusovinda (Seeds), Twinkbora, Twin-Tail Orbibom (Berries), Uksapo, Umbral Sphinx (Juveniles), Uniwingworms, Wafflebark Ferine (Berries), Weird-Boned Twintail, Whiskrugg, Wub, Xenobees)
Respiration: Active (Chambered Unidirectional Lung)
Thermoregulation: Endotherm (Feathers)
Reproduction: Sexual (Male and Female, Hard-Shelled Eggs)

All throughout sagan the Common Visorbill's songs can be heard, as the descendants of the Songsauce Piper, branched off into a migratory lifestyle, spreading their high-speed wings and settling wherever they found a tall branch to perch on and a warm sun to lay their eggs under.


The rocking of the Femur (1A) coupled through the Tibiotarsus (1B) pulls & cranks the Grashof muscle loop (1C) building angular momentum at the base of the Cannon bone (1D) which translates the angular momentum for flight or hopping. The digitigrade walking toe stretches while hopping (2A) and curls down when perching (2B).

Limb anatomy:
By extending its ancestor's thick thigh muscle over the knee & tibiotarsus while tightening the muscle at its lower end, the Visorbill has evolved the Grashof muscle Loop, a tight muscular band restricting the motion at the heel of the cannon bone. As the femur pulls & pushes the tibiotarsus, the Grashof Loop restricts the motion of the heel into circular rotation around the muscular loop's hip connection, building angular momentum which in turn pulls the femur through the tibia into continuing the cycle, thus maintaining the energy of the motion from one rotation to the next with a minimal loss.
In terms of classical mechanics, this creates a 4-bar rocker-crank mechanism, in which the hips form the base, the muscular loop acts as the rotating crank, the femur acts as the rocker, and the tibiotarsus connects the two as the coupler. As the femur rocks back and forth, it builds up angular momentum around the grashof loop, speeding up the rotation at the heel of the cannon bone.



During flight, the Grashof muscle remains by the hips while the cannon bone and wingtip toe extend sideways, stretching out the wingtip claw and unfurling the long feathers comprising the main length of the wings, allowing for the long wings optimized for sustained high-speed flight, not like the Terran common swift or the Eurasian hobby.
As the Grashof muscle rotates from the heel of the cannon bone, the wings flap comes from the rotation at the base of the heel. Much like fast-flapping Terran birds that use angular momentum during flight, such as swifts and hummingbirds, they are able to build up and maintain angular momentum at the base of the wing, allowing for continuous high-speed flight. Just like those Terran birds, the smaller the circular path taken by the base of the wing, the faster it takes to complete the full rotation that makes for a complete wing flap. Unlike those Terran birds, which need tiny arms at the base of their wings to generate angular momentum along smaller circular paths and are therefore limited in muscle attachment points to those tiny arms, the Grashof muscle allows the Visorbill to generate the angular momentum from muscles attached to the femur, providing them with larger surface area for muscle attachment points with which they power the Visorbill's sustained high-speed flight.

On foot, the wingtip toe flexes up, collecting the long flight feathers with the wingtip claw. Shifting completely to a digitigrade pose, they move on foot by hopping on the palm of their walking toes. By using the Grashof muscle to rotate the heel of the foot and by bending their flexible walking toe like the foot of a Terran kangaroo rat, they can quickly hop between branches, crucial for the survival of juveniles that aren't ready for flight. While the Grashof muscle loop prevents them from launching themselves as high or as fast as their direct ancestor, it allows the Visorbill to quickly build up angular momentum while hopping or even while staying in place, creating the appearance of tail twerking before takeoff. At rest, the walking toe naturally curves upwards while its claw curls downwards, creating a tight grip that allows perching on branches effortlessly.



By shifting the backplates of the Songsauce Pipe (1) they redirect the air inhaled via the forward air intake (1A) to exhale out of the sideways (1B), angled (1C) or backwards (1D) facing air thrusters, blowing against the direction of motion to redirect & reorient themselves. The Eyestrill is protected behind the Visor Lens (2A) during flight, but stretches outside of the visor to sniff the air (2B). Sound is funneled (3) around the tongue underneath the ears. Identification marks (4) covering the tail plate allow visorbills to recognize each other.

Flight agility:
During their long migrations, they often have to rely on flying prey for sustenance. While the Grashof muscles are optimized for continuous high speed, they are not optimized for rapid speed changes. Like their ancestors, they mainly steer through their ears and tails, but to take sharp turns and dives without changing their wing rotation, they follow the steering of their ears by using their wing tip claws to control the shape of their wings, often aided by the muscles of their walking toe (that is otherwise folded over the wingtip claw to reduce drag during flight).
At the same time, using their ancestral Songsauce "pipe" mechanism to shift their back plates and cover the output air holes of their unidirectional respiration system, they've adapted their air holes to act as directional thrusters, with the intake air holes facing forward, the 1st pair of output air holes facing sideways, the 2nd pair at 45 degrees and the fourth facing completely backward, they can redirect the air blowing out of their lungs to aid in agile maneuvers and take-offs.

Sensory perception:
Extending from their mandibles are their name sake's visor lenses, thin transparent chitin within reinforced rings protecting the eyestrills from the fast accumulation of dirt and moisture during long high-speed flights. Each stretch of transparent chitin is covered with a layer of protective wax, protecting it from the elements and preventing glare and shine from obscuring their vision, not unlike the Terran glasswing butterfly. While helpful in maintaining sight, the visor doesn't help smell their environment. To compensate, they will occasionally stretch out a few of their eyestrills to take in the air around the visor.

Like their ancestors, they funnel sound around their tongue to the underside of their ear membranes, compensating for distortions made from redirecting their ears as they steer during flight as well as acting as a sort of radar dish while hunting & foraging for food under the leaf litter.
Just like their ancestors, the sensory information is processed on the way from the head--like proboscis, presented to the brain as a synesthetic gestalt that runs on the same cognition their one-time blind ancestors used to make sense of the world around them, creating a shared intuitive match between sounds colors shapes and smells. This forms the basis for their communication, allowing them to match their Songsauce flute sounds to the objects of their description, which are most often each other, each designated by the unique identifying markings on each of their tail plates. unlike their ancestors, they are more prone to mismatches due to their wide distributions and larger populations, which can lead to getting socially shamed, losing sexual opportunities, and even being kicked out of the communal gala, though brighter individuals have been known to compensate through mimicry.


From left to right, Visorbill egg (1), newborn (2), 15 days old Juvenile (3) and 40 days old adult (4).

Reproduction & Development:
Visorbills have two mating seasons a year, taking advantage of springtime in each hemisphere as they migrate from one to the other, though not all will have both of them successful, and some will try to increase their odds by competing for the best nesting grounds in the tropical regions in the middle.

The Visorbill's gala is a flexible social unit, and Visorbills will often move between galas as they cross paths during the migration or when they border each other during mating seasons when the gala spreads out into wide networks of neighboring nests.

Visorbills will compete in song and flight as they try to impress each other, and they mate in the air as the male gametes clump together before release, and the female turns and catches the clumps midair, a process they will repeat a few dozen times.
While the gala provides advantages in mutual protection & mating opportunities, it also presents an existential danger, as Visorbills will routinely try to cuck each other and spread some of their eggs to neighboring nests, while also combating the same phenomena from happening to them by other visorbills, socially by forming mutual pacts to alert their neighbors and fueling gala drama, and biologically by laying eggs with unique identifying markers (and in turn targeting eggs with similar markers in neighboring nests), though with about a dozen or two eggs per nest it is easy to be confused about the exact marking of each, though those are laid gradually, finishing their incubations in groups of 2 or 3 a day.
Visorbill newborns are extremely altricial, close to their ancestral larva. Lacking feathers they crawl on their toes and huddle together for heat. They do not yet have a distinct visor, and their eyestrills are pressed sideways to study their sibling's tale plate markers, recognize the tail plates of their parents & sound the alert at the signs of danger. By 15 days they will have their feathers, though still lacking the distinct blue structural coloration that comes in adulthood, showing their true brown colors instead, providing them with camouflage as they make their first hop to forage for food on their own, often forming social connections with their neighbors, as by 40 days they will be flight capable, and while many will follow their parents, some will try to establish a new generation of galas and seek a migration path of their own.


Immigration routes (Green) from the nesting grounds of the northern regions (Red) through the desirable tropical nesting regions (Purple) to the nesting grounds of the southern regions (Blue).

This post has been edited by MNIDJM: Apr 3 2023, 11:32 AM

I’m not sure how the crank mechanism works

Do you have IRL examples of flying things that use this?

QUOTE (HethrJarrod @ Sep 25 2022, 12:55 PM)

I’m not sure how the crank mechanism works Do you have IRL examples of flying things that use this?

This is a classic crank rocker mechanism, which is the common way to translate between rotational movement and rocking movement and vice versa.


While I haven't seen it described in quite the same way, the muscle structure in the legs of a kangaroo or a rabbit is close and results in the circular momentum you can see around their thighs that builds up and recycles energy from hop to hop.


Now we do not have birds that use this specifically, but we do have birds that flap their wings by spinning a very short humerus and ulna to create circular momentum at the base of disproportionately long wingtips that carry the bulk of the wing feathers, like swifts and hummingbirds.


The visorbill and to a lesser extent its ancestor, combines the two systems, using the first to build up and recycle circular momentum and the latter to express it into flight.

The cost was that to evolve long wingtips, also meant evolving absurdly long toes, and then using the wingtips hoof as a spoon to collect the feathers so that it would be able to walk.
That only needed to happen to the outermost toes, but natural selection was evil and placed the mutation in a way that overgrew both hoofed toes, in its ancestor as an unfortunate spandrel, though with the visorbill adapting to digitigrade walking and perching it is becoming more of a feature.

P.s.
The main difference in wing anatomy between Songsauce Piper (the ancestor) and the Visorbill is that the Piper's muscles translated the motion to a linear push, which combined with elliptical wings for short bursts of intense flight, while the Visorbills muscle ends in a very tight loop at the base of the wing/foot forcing it into a circular motion that recycles and builds up energy.
(If in the future you want to evolve something with short speedy bursts of rapid flight and take off, evolve from the Piper, if you want continuous efficient build up of speed, evolve from the visorbill. For gliding, the Sausophrey is your friend, though if you want to evolve a songsauce glider because there just isn't enough singing in the sky, I recommend going through the Piper as the limb anatomy is closer to RL gliders, though you'll have to increase the wingspan considerably)

This post has been edited by Jarlaxle: Sep 26 2022, 05:59 AM

Oh, that reminds me. Have you seen other recent developments in the flying sauceback department? Particularly--



arboreal "quails" that use their tail spurs for stability in trees and have better eyesight




and ophreys that are getting a little better at stability and climbing

There's also a tree genus in the Wallace-Koseman area that this species could feed on the berries of.

You have Types and Flavors mixed up.

QUOTE (HethrJarrod @ Sep 27 2022, 01:27 AM)

You have Types and Flavors mixed up.

no he doesn't

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Sep 27 2022, 01:35 AM)

QUOTE (HethrJarrod @ Sep 27 2022, 01:27 AM) You have Types and Flavors mixed up. no he doesn't

A species may have up to 2 Types and up to 3 Flavors.

[quote]{2 Flavors (Rainforests, Woodlands), 3 Types (Tropical, Subtropical, Temperate)}[quote]

sorry if I'm just confused.

You can have 3 types.

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Sep 27 2022, 04:04 AM)

There's also a tree genus in the Wallace-Koseman area that this species could feed on the berries of.

of gen 166, if all approved, I'd add these to their visorbill diet:

Sweetworms
Uniwingworms
Ferries (Berries)
Minibees
Dragonworms
Leepi Meepi
Flesh Fairy
Mudfish

You could also add the Visorbill to Tyranical Corvisnapper diet.

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Sep 27 2022, 04:04 AM)

Oh, that reminds me. Have you seen other recent developments in the flying sauceback department? Particularly-- arboreal "quails" that use their tail spurs for stability in trees and have better eyesight and ophreys that are getting a little better at stability and climbing

The Ferry Quail composite eye is an interesting development. Wouldnt each eye see quite a bit more then the components of composite eyes in insects? And the Wallyhawk's climbing method... Now that's a hook in itself, no pun intended. I am guessing there's a multi generational plan for their anatomy going on there?

The shared habitat and arboreal nesting... I wonder if a Ferry Quail larva with a colorful hind and large grey spots on its back could convince a visborbill parent to feed it.

This post has been edited by Jarlaxle: Sep 27 2022, 05:13 PM

QUOTE (Jarlaxle @ Sep 27 2022, 08:12 PM)

QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Sep 27 2022, 04:04 AM) There's also a tree genus in the Wallace-Koseman area that this species could feed on the berries of. of gen 166, if all approved, I'd add these to their visorbill diet: Sweetworms Uniwingworms Ferries (Berries) Minibees Dragonworms Leepi Meepi Flesh Fairy Mudfish You could also add the Visorbill to Tyranical Corvisnapper diet. QUOTE (Disgustedorite @ Sep 27 2022, 04:04 AM) Oh, that reminds me. Have you seen other recent developments in the flying sauceback department? Particularly-- arboreal "quails" that use their tail spurs for stability in trees and have better eyesight and ophreys that are getting a little better at stability and climbing The Ferry Quail composite eye is an interesting development. Wouldnt each eye see quite a bit more then the components of composite eyes in insects? And the Wallyhawk's climbing method... Now that's a hook in itself, no pun intended. I am guessing there's a multi generational plan for their anatomy going on there? The shared habitat and arboreal nesting... I wonder if a Ferry Quail larva with a colorful hind and large grey spots on its back could convince a visborbill parent to feed it.

They can be added as long as they were submitted before this - the standard has been that prey are submitted before predators. As such, the tyrannical corvisnapper can't technically have your species listed as prey, though you can note that it is preyed on by it.

The compound eyes in ferry quail would be better than an insect eye of similar density, yes. The adaptation of more eyes eventually bundled together like that I feel was a logical development because mirror eyestrils aren't actually all that great at image formation and already rely on redundancy, much like the similar structure used by scallops, but only the quails were able to make the jump to getting more eyes because they don't use their oral ring for food processing the way other saucebacks do (thus more eyes doesn't affect their ability to eat, and in this case was actually beneficial since it created numerous oral spines). The poor image formation is probably something to take into account for jewel-eyed sauceback species as an interesting constraint to be worked with/around, in general.

Wallyhawk was kinda meant as the start of a "better hawk" radiation that kinda pushes other basal falcotheres out of the main "eagle" and "hawk" niches, with the existing falcotheres then specializing into different roles. If you have ideas for new weird things to do with its claws though, I'd be interested in seeing them.

The ferry quail is meant to be the start of a radiation of more distinct kinds of jewel-eyed saucebacks itself...we do probably need more brood parasites. But consider--what if it was a pink-shelled visorbill descendant that was the brood parasite? More kinds of things from more kinds of things.

The gif helped incredibly more so than the diagram with the blue circle/red swoosh.

It works great in 2D space. Although… does it do the same in 3D space?

QUOTE (Jarlaxle @ Sep 26 2022, 05:42 AM)

QUOTE (HethrJarrod @ Sep 25 2022, 12:55 PM) I’m not sure how the crank mechanism works Do you have IRL examples of flying things that use this? This is a classic crank rocker mechanism, which is the common way to translate between rotational movement and rocking movement and vice versa.

The circle would have to be much closer to the chest to work, imo

Otherwise it’s more like an insect’s flying than a bird’s flying

This post has been edited by HethrJarrod: Sep 30 2022, 04:58 PM

Basically, my suggestion is to move the round thing away from the hip. Rabbits might have something similar but rabbits also don’t FLY.

The mechanism needs to be in the correct alignment for flapping to work

I've added annotation and image descriptions to the diagrams, hopefully these will clear everything up and better explain the mechanics involved.

QUOTE (HethrJarrod @ Sep 30 2022, 04:17 PM)

The circle would have to be much closer to the chest to work, imo Otherwise it’s more like an insect’s flying than a bird’s flying

Kinetic sculptures are awesome

This one works with the same mechanism as the one in your gif but doesn't cover the center, which lets us see the main advantage of aligning the cranks with the center gear shaft in a clockwork system - by aligning the cranks with the central gear you are shortening the path from the rotor, which is the source of the kinetic energy.

The problem with muscles is that unlike gears they need to be attached on both ends. If a series of random mutations caused muscles to try to spin a body part on its axis, all of those would be torn apart, along with blood vessels, nerve tissue, etc. This is why using our current biology, we do not place the rotor as the source of the kinetic energy in a system. Instead, we create circular momentum by turning the body part, I.E. To "spin" your arms in circles, your humerus doesn't spin on its axis, instead, it is turning the direction of your arm to create circular momentum at the edge of your humerus.


In the Visorbill, the rocking of the Femur (1A) coupled through the Tibia (1B) pulls & cranks the Grashof muscle loop (1C) building circular momentum at the base of the Metapodial (1D) which translates the circular momentum for flight or hopping.

That means the energy comes from the rocker (the thigh rocking back and forth) to the crank to build circular momentum. Even if for some reason you wanted to reverse it, you wouldn't be able to, because it's a boneless crank, it can only be pulled and stretched, it can't push.

That's said, your main suggestion isn't wrong: While it currently would be quite the contortion, and the current location places the circular momentum at the same relative distance from the torso as that of a swift, there are many advantages to holding the mechanism closer to the main body, in reducing drag and in handling larger weights or longer limbs, and that is one of the directions I am hoping to take some of its future descendants.

This post has been edited by Jarlaxle: Oct 6 2022, 12:00 AM