Marcoret

Marcorets are large predatory birds that inhabit the Frost Mountain Range on Greenerth. They are apex predators, hunting down any large animal they can find such as ralamahrs, plucking them into the air and then dropping them onto the mountainside.

Anatomy

The adult's plumage is a dark blue, with streaky white feathers in the wings. Wild marcorets are usually shinier and wetter in appearance, as they enjoy rolling around in snow on the mountains they live in. Their beaks are slender, with a hooked mandible, designed to tear into flesh. Their neck feathers are most prominant, as they are lighter in colouration and fan out.
Their legs are partially coated in feathers, too keep them warm in the cold climates, but their toes and the bottom part of their legs are covered in thick scales, for protection.

Reproduction

Like most animals on the planet, marcorets mate for life. They find their perfect partner at three years of age, when they become sexually mature. Male marcorets will attempt to impress females by performing the most riveting of dances. It involves many head bops, wing flaps, spinning in circles, and then forming a large circle in the ground out of sticks and rocks. If the female is impressed, they will mate inside a large nest they construct within a tree, said nest expanding year by year.
When nests grow too large, they could potentially cause the tree's trunk to snap from the weight, and if this occurs during nesting season and eggs are destroyed, the pair can die of heartbreak.

Diet

Marcorets are carnivores, and prey on the biggest animals they can find. Their most common prey is the ralamahr, a large species of deer that reaches more than two metres at the shoulder. Thanks to their size and strength, marcorets will pick off the largest deer they can find from the mountainside, and drop it hundreds of metres above land to kill it. They then land at the corpse and eat it in its entirety, and go without food for the next week or two.
Because of this, some people that live in the mountains alongside these birds will keep ralamahrs close by them, so it a marcoret targets them, they go after the ralamahr rather than themselves.

Subspecies

Lesser Marcoret

Lesser marcorets are a smaller subspecies of marcoret. As they are smaller, their hunting techniques are slightly different. Instead of picking prey right off the ground, they target those on the edges of the mountains, and dive-bomb them and push them off, so they fall to their deaths. Arguably more brutal, marcorets are considered to have one of the most violent hunting techniques on Greenerth.

Lifespan

20 years

Average Length

1.8 - 2.2 m

Geographic Distribution

• Frost Lands
• Frost Mountain Range
• Greenerth

Average Wingspan

7 - 8 metres