Whiskered treeswifts (Hemiprocne comata) live in various subtropical or tropical forests in Southeast Asia.
They remind me of swallows, but are more colorful. Especially the combination of grey plus blue in the wings and back appeals to me.
Setting personal color preferences aside, wouldn’t it be so much more interesting to read a secondary world fantasy story with, say, messenger birds that look like whiskered treeswifts rather than the uninspired and unoriginal corvids?
Yes, corvids are AMAZING birds, but they’re used EVERYWHERE. Could they not be replaced by something else in a fantasy story? Or at least made vibrantly colored?
Image by David and Cathy Cook via The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Macaulay Library
The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?
Co-Geeking 