Salit

How can something so cute domesticize itself? They....
.....Just appear anywhere people are? That I think is the evolutionary point.

Nestled around the nooks and crannies of the cities and towns of Central and South Levis, is the salit. This hopping bird is built for the city life, tending to huddle down into their down for rest and safety - often picking the rooftop gardens and edges of buildings to rest in between moments of mischief. They are so good at being part of the scenery that they are often mistaken for the wild plants that grow within the untended spaces of the towns of Levis.
Their main form of locomotion is a hop that is often small and rapid, but has been measured to go as far as 30cm before they need to deploy their stumpy wings for a glide.

Basic Information

Anatomy

About the size of a grapefuit, the salit are mostly feather, and only partially bird (metaphorically). Highly dextrerous, their centre of balance is situated in their highly dense feet, which is a plus as their main form of transportation is their hops, as their wings are squat and mostly incapable of lift.
With a small stumpy beak that is built tough, the salit has not found a defense they cannot crack open on their hunger for seeds. Their stomach is small, but their metabolism mighty - able to supply a day's energy off one to two seeds. Beneath that strong beak is a stretchable craw, made for stuffing with seeds, though city salit largely refrain from this practice as the cities lack the stone to build cages with which to store their hauls.

Biological Traits

While most Salit are that green and brown and grey, the main advantage of the salit is their psychological need to fit their surroundings and as the connections between towns grows stronger, several subspecies have developed.
The most unique is the subset that includes the 'familiar' Timus, whose body has developed a red colouration and whose diet has become more carnivorous.
The other variant recorded is a white version that has seen both around the Whisperling Rebellion and over by Saburra. While the Saburra version has a less dense down layer, both show a small chain of bioluminescent nodules beneath the skin, remarkably different to their central brothers, indicating the two populations either share a common progenitor or some sort of simultaneous adaptation.

Genetics and Reproduction

Salit courtship is a strange thing. It is the male of the species that decides when it is ready to mate, being smaller naturally than the large females, the male will grow out its tailfeathers into these long curled things, that they rub together to make a loud keening sound. At this time, the mature women of the the species will flock to the male, the largest females pushing their competitors away to mate with the male. In this way a salit male can mate with about 3 - 5 females before becoming exhausted, their tail feathers dropping off to signal an end to the endeavour.
As salit are community led creatures, brooding salit will cluster together, warming multiple eggs in a nest shared between multiple ladies. At this stage any male is seen as a threat, and salit can be quite aggressive to those they see as threat to their brood.

Dietary Needs and Habits

A salit subsides on nuts and seeds, with maybe the occasional beetle tossed in, but mainly with the nuts most commonly planted within the cities. Greedy or enterprising salit can be found sneaking into poorly maintained seed stores, letting out little chirps of victory.
Less urban salit have beaks designed to smash through the flesh of fruit or crack open the smaller seed pods, often collecting an array of seeds from an unsuspecting bush before gathering the seeds in their craw and taking them back to their den for storage, careful to surround their seeds in dry rocky 'cages'.

Genetic Ancestor(s)