Birds

The wild birds of the Known World. For the kept ones see Broek, Kaeva, Skae, and Chichei.

Spirra: The small hedgerow songbird on every hedge, wall, and eave in the world. It nests in the agricultural rings and takes a small share of grain nobody bothers to calculate.
Ravna: The black scavenging bird of roads and battlefields. It follows armies, caravans, and herds and is the first thing to appear when any of them has gone. A bony ridge along each wing settles most disputes over a carcass. Intelligent in the way a Broek is and untrainable in the way a Broek is not; unwelcome nearly everywhere and never killed. Stormharbor holds that a Ravna over a ship means something and disagrees about what.
Maeva: The shore bird: loud, numerous, and shameless, on every coast and in every harbor, taking scraps, refuse, and anything set down and walked away from. Eldershore's harbor has thousands and every one is watching. No one has ever discouraged them from anywhere.
Faelka: A small hunting bird of open ground that takes Chirska, Spirra, and anything of that size, with a thin spur of bone along the leading edge of each wing that keeps its brief fights over ground brief. Kept nowhere; it hunts for itself and is tolerated for what it removes from the fields. Not to be confused with the walking Kaeva.
Gaesla: The waterfowl of rivers, ponds, harbor edges, and standing water, taken for eggs and meat when it can be caught; some southern households keep it, badly, and it tries to escape. It survived by flying and laying its eggs on water where nothing could follow.
Nochwyng: A small flying creature of the night, named for the Nochwyn it eats. It comes out as the singing starts and works until early morning; a warm evening south of the Frostline produces them in great numbers. It roosts in cave ceilings, roof spaces, and under bridges — places too high for most things to reach, which is why it is still here.

See also