#dwarf kingfisher

[herpsandbirds]

Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher (Ceyx erithaca), family Alcedinidae, order Coraciiformes, Karnala Bird Sanctuary, Maharashtra, India

photograph by Kessy George

[far-side-skies]

Storm Hawks OC Challenge - February 2023

Hey there folks! Welcome to February's bird OC challenge! I hope the first month of the year treated everyone well, and that you're all ready for a very colourful birb to work with.

I give you all the Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher (Ceyx erithaca)!

I want to thank @rainymeadows for suggesting this one a while back in the Storm Hawks server.

Found mostly in South-East Asia and the Indian subcontinent, these birds are most common in deciduous and evergreen forest habitats, along with alluvial forests and mangroves (other habitats can be found on the wikipedia page). Despite being called kingfishers, they aren't primarily piscivores, and are usually found eating insects such as mantises and beetles, likely due to their size, as they can weigh an average of nine grams.

The deadline for this month is Sunday the 26th of February, 8pm GMT. As always, rules and extra images, including an optional colour palette are below the cut.

Minimum requirements for drawn entries to be put in the winner's vote are a name, occupation, the character's home/birth Terra and at least one paragraph (or about 100 words) of written backstory.

Minimum requirements for written (i.e. written dossiers without art, or mini-fics for the character) are 500 words including backstory and appearance. Feel free to make a mini-fic out of this challenge, I'll make sure to link it with the final collage as well.

Entrants who are part of the Storm Hawks discord server will have the chance of getting a custom role for the next month! If you’re not part of the discord server, please ask for an invite if you’re interested.

You're not expected to create a character from scratch for this challenge. If you've got an older character concept that's been collecting dust or that you'd like to take the opportunity to revamp, feel free! The goal of this challenge is to inspire people.

Collaborations are allowed! Same rules apply, the only addition is that you and your partner(s) just need to make note of who was responsible for what part of the character

Make sure to tag me in your entries and also DM me with a link to your entry. Tumblr is not always reliable about notifications for this sort of thing, and I don't want to risk missing anyone's entries, so better safe than sorry.

The group collage of entries, and the winner's vote are opt-in. Participation of those parts of this challenge are not mandatory.

The winner of the vote will receive a free sketch piece of their character from me.

[demeter1111]

Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher by Ayyappan hariharan @passivelyactive on Twitter.

[zombiecakes]

Yearly art post, go! I keep forgetting Tumblr exists, then having nostalgic moments where I NEED IT, then forgetting it exists again. So... yeah. Hi c:

[keepingitneutral]

Ceyx Mindanensis,

Meet the ultra-colourful Southern Philippine dwarf kingfisher.

The Philippines is home to an incredibly colourful group of kingfishers ‘Ceyx Mindanensis’ the tiniest species of forest kingfisher.

Very few people have the opportunity to see one, but field biologist Miguel David De Leon from the Robert S. Kennedy Bird Conservancy was lucky enough to recently photograph the dwarf kingfisher.

Let these images brighten up your day!

All images courtesy of Miguel David De Leon / Australian Geographic

[moreroom4happiness]

Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher (Ceyx erithaca), India

Photo: Adesh Shivkar.

[far-side-skies]

Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher OC Challenge Entry

And here we are! Cutting it close once again this month, it's been very weird when it comes to creative motivation. But I'm super excited to show y'all my half of a collaboration with @grimm-the-6th! You can find their half here.

Grimm did the art, I wrote a small collection of snapshots from the perspective of their father, and we both had a lot of fun figuring out the details of this character and expanding on lore.

Jewel (aka Circus Kid, because until we figured out a name, that's what we called them and it's just stuck in any and all Discord conversations about them XD) is a night elf/crawler-Dawnrunner hybrid from our combined lore headcanons. Both species are capable of laying eggs, and so their union lead to the existence of Jewel.

They were raised by their Dawnrunner father, Romeo while their '-Crawler' mother Juliet is currently laying down a claim on a night elf hive. Sadly they couldn't remain together whilst she established her rule due to how easy it would be for any usurpers to use both her partner and unhatched child against her.

For most of their life, Jewel has been raised by Romeo and the rest of the circus group, and earned a place in the show as a trapeze artist and acrobat, performing both solo feats and with her father.

I'd love to go into more about their life in the circus and beyond, but I'm incredibly tired, so I'll have to leave y'all with this and Grimm and I can potentially share more at a later time.

Read the fic below! Yes I wrote it in comic sans it helps. Definitely going to expand more on this.

Circus Kid Vignettes.docx

Microsoft Word Document

[far-side-skies]

And we are finally up and running! Here's the lineup for February's bird OC entries for the Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher! These all look so great! I love how everyone's used the colours for this one!

Vote for a favourite here: https://strawpoll.com/polls/6QnMOQXX7Ze

Dalia and Rowan, the Vapos cherubs by @irisarchborn

Jewel (aka Circus Kid), the dawnrunner-nightcrawler hybrid by myself and @grimm-the-6th

Roxanne King, the flashy detective by @rainymeadows-art

Anther Talon, the Cyclonian sniper by @bloo-per

Cedric Fisher, the Talon explosives expert by @happypanda101

Thank you to everyone who took part this month. Stay tuned for the next bird which will come out sometime soon!

Hint: You'll find it somewhere here on my blog already.