HOME | DD

Description

39 million years past and one alternate timeline away, on a parallel Seychelles in the late Eocene, a species of basal charadriiform pursued an odd lifestyle. Though it was built much like any other wader, it was bulkier and bigger, the height of a small child, and it's tiny wings were tucked under body feathers, invisible. Wading through the shallows and marching down the beaches, Spiffles descended from a very primitive wader that settled the large proto-Seychelles shortly after the K-Pg extinction event, exploding in diversity and size as a result of the predator-free environment. With so many waders competing in their classic coastal niches, and more exotic ones inland, the early Spiffles were forced to specialize. Invertebrate prey was varied, and the Spiffles evolutionarily settled on the large, native polychaetes, the Noodles, that teemed in the mud and the reefs. Common enough to be their sole food source, but difficult enough quarry to exclude others, they were perfect, and the Spiffles became so specialized that they almost never ate anything else.

Perfection seldom lasts, however, and new arrivals to the islands, reptiles and other birds, dethroned the waders and took over. The ecological destruction was so great that only the largest, most specialized, and last species of Spiffle made it, outlasting almost all other native waders by virtue of an untouchable diet. But Spiffles were slow, on foot and in breeding, and so even the last species dwindled in population and genetic diversity as their nests were raided. Feathers were blown down the sunny, tropical shore, framed by a neon blue ocean, away from the stiff body of the very last Spiffle ever to exist, until then, the sole survivor of a desperate and inbred line. The most basal waders on the planet were dead forever. But in this alternate story of the Cenozoic, one where the Chicxulub Impactor landed in a very slightly different place at a very slightly different time, the charadriiformes became the dominant birds. The Spiffles may have been gone, but they were an anachronism, a throwback, to a time before the waders were a great dynasty, one that would take up all the glory that more varied birds do in our timeline.

Description

39 million years past and one alternate timeline away, on a parallel Seychelles in the late Eocene, a species of basal charadriiform pursued an odd lifestyle. Though it was built much like any other wader, it was bulkier and bigger, the height of a small child, and it's tiny wings were tucked under body feathers, invisible. Wading through the shallows and marching down the beaches, Spiffles descended from a very primitive wader that settled the large proto-Seychelles shortly after the K-Pg extinction event, exploding in diversity and size as a result of the predator-free environment. With so many waders competing in their classic coastal niches, and more exotic ones inland, the early Spiffles were forced to specialize. Invertebrate prey was varied, and the Spiffles evolutionarily settled on the large, native polychaetes, the Noodles, that teemed in the mud and the reefs. Common enough to be their sole food source, but difficult enough quarry to exclude others, they were perfect, and the Spiffles became so specialized that they almost never ate anything else.

Perfection seldom lasts, however, and new arrivals to the islands, reptiles and other birds, dethroned the waders and took over. The ecological destruction was so great that only the largest, most specialized, and last species of Spiffle made it, outlasting almost all other native waders by virtue of an untouchable diet. But Spiffles were slow, on foot and in breeding, and so even the last species dwindled in population and genetic diversity as their nests were raided. Feathers were blown down the sunny, tropical shore, framed by a neon blue ocean, away from the stiff body of the very last Spiffle ever to exist, until then, the sole survivor of a desperate and inbred line. The most basal waders on the planet were dead forever. But in this alternate story of the Cenozoic, one where the Chicxulub Impactor landed in a very slightly different place at a very slightly different time, the charadriiformes became the dominant birds. The Spiffles may have been gone, but they were an anachronism, a throwback, to a time before the waders were a great dynasty, one that would take up all the glory that more varied birds do in our timeline.