SPECIES

Lebbirds, as the name suggests, have a winged feline body, with handlike forepaws. Despite many similarities, they're quite unrelated to sphinxes; lebbirds are a converging design that evolved 30,000 km away. The parallel is not exact; lebbirds are far more arboreal than sphinxes. Note the long hind legs and splayed hind digits; lebbirds can stand and walk upright along branches, balancing with their long tail, or using it as a sort of third leg. Yet they can climb using all four legs, or swing by their arms and prehensile tail, as well as fly. This complex design-compromise means you can find lebbirds almost anywhere--if it's warm. Their spidery frames and short velvety fur are adaptations to heat; they don't mind warm rains, but cold storms or a freeze can quickly kill an unsheltered lebbird.

Nearly leopard-sized, lebbirds are far lighter, being hollow-boned. Their greater fragility makes them relatively gentle and cautious. Originally omnivorous hunter-gatherers of the jungle canopy, eating fruit, nuts, termites and especially river-fish, many today are ethical vegetarians (though high-protein ones, heavy on dairy products from herds of domestic milk-monkeys, plus bird- and lizard-eggs).

BEHAVIOR

Not just their appearance but their temperament parallels sphinxes. Friendly, as sensual as leopards, but gentler, due to their fragility. On Wersgorix, their homeland, many are still cliff-fishers and orchardists. But in mixed villages, lebbirds often specialize in bodywork, scents and herbs, seduction and sex (considered a respectable art by most Lyran species). In big cities and more cosmopolitan cultures, the intense curiousity of lebbirds makes them good therapists, shamans, and scientists--all fields with complex, multidimensional puzzles, much like flying or climbing through their ancestral rainforest canopy.

Their least sphinxlike feature is their love affair with trees--lebbirds feel lost without them, and never settle steppes or deserts. Nor are they as aquatic--though they do fish, they don't hug sea-coasts as sphinx villages do.

They're also less firmly four-footed than sphinxes--they often stand or walk upright, though they use their tail as a sort of third leg, so it's a stretch to call them bipedal; not to pun, but lebbirds swing both ways. Lyr's southern hemisphere has a third unrelated-yet-parallel species, the considerably more humanoid icari.

Many lebbirds also excel as performing artists--actors, dancers, and especially musicians. Pictured here is a bard playing a spiral "ammonite harp", made of a single large shell with a deep thrumming resonance. Her long rounded snout suggests she's of the Diomedean subspecies. Though they're only 3-4000 km from the lebbird homelands, they're isolated by the dangerous Kyrie flyway; genetic drift has quickly made this tiny group distinctive. Wing color (not visible here) is also distinctive in this tribe--white and pale yellow underwings are common, though rare elsewhere.

HABITAT

Lebbirds evolved in the hot rainforests of Wersgorix, eventually spreading north to southern Troisleons and west along the Polesotechnic Strip--Ulash, Ikrananka, Larsum, the Kraoka Islands, east Gaiila, the islands of Oronesia, and the southern Ythri region. To the east, a few lebbirds have made it to the Kyrie Islands and even the west coast of Diomedes, though their numbers are still small. They'll probably remain a rarity on the mainland, since their rainforest niche is already occupied by the native koreens.

After all I've said about lebbirds only living in warm rainforests, their second preferred habitat may seem paradoxical: cities! Many lebbirds still live in traditional treetop and clifftop villages, but they enjoy being around other species, and perhaps an equal number today live in multi-species towns. Cities all the way to southern Oronesia have enough resident lebbirds to support cafes and restaurants with their distinctive, sweet-spicy cooking.

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