An adzebill and its buddies (Patreon)

I've taken a break from the Eotyrannus monograph, from the current Dorling Kindersley work, from my curatorial work at Falmouth, from the Dinosaurs in the Wild promotion work I need to do and from freelance article-writing to ... draw some more birds for The Big Book, and here's what's new.

I drew a woodpecker for the book a long time ago (an Ivorybill, no less), but I was never happy with it and have long wanted to do a new woodpecker. So here it is (far right): a Nubian woodpecker (Campethera nubica), redrawn from a photo (taken by TetZoo patron Simon Woolley). There are many woodpecker lineages, but there aren't many fossil woodpeckers -- I might end up drawing another two or three (I think a wryneck is needed), but that's that for now. Oh, here's the Ivorybill...

To the left of the woodpecker, we have a bunch of extinct birds. The tern-like charadriiform at far left is Laricola, a Miocene European bird (several species are known) long classified as a gull but now regarded as distinct enough for its own 'family' (Laricolidae). Good fossils show that laricolids had bills about as long and slender as those of slender-billed gulls, and longer legs. I did my best to get the proportions right (basing the proportions on what was described by Vanesa De Pietri et al. in 2011), though the wing and tail length is speculative. The colouring is speculative too. Laricola is known from great remains, check out this cranial material described and figured in the De Pietri et al. paper...

The big bird at the back is Aptornis, the New Zealand adzebill. Great skeletal material is known from these birds - entire articulated skeletons. I reconstructed the core of the body by tracing over one of the best of the skeletons, and then reconstructed the plumage and other soft tissues via comparison with rails and other birds (note: Aptornis may not be close to rails at all. There remains, in fact, much uncertainly over its affinities). Based on a few things (a forest-floor, woodland ecology, and the presence of large, bird-killing sympatric raptors), I surmised a cryptic patterning inspired by rails and other cryptic birds.

Finally, the dark, erect-bodied bird to the right of the adzebill is the extinct auk Mancalla. Mancalline auks were reasonably big (c 50 cm tall), vaguely penguin-like North Pacific seabirds that had wings incapable of tight folding and of flipper-like form. Good skulls reveal the weird, deep bill shape shown here - quite distinct from that of any other auk. Again, I tried to get the proportions as right as I could from published sources. The colour scheme is based on what's present in other auks but is otherwise wholly speculative. I'm quite happy with the result - it will be fun to see it composited alongside the many other auks I've done (a new montage will be uploaded here in time).

I should add that the birds are not drawn to scale!

And that's that for now. Even more birds due to be done yet...

All the best and thanks for being awesome :)