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Common Cavern Birds — Description
The Cavern City is a massive complex, hundreds of miles deep, upwards of a thousand feet tall from roof to floor, and tens of miles deep at its widest points. While only the first few hundred meters in receive any sufficient light for most plant communities, the Pyreplume river offers plentiful nutrients to the cave's residents before seeping deeper underground. No nutrient is wasted by the mycoforests, vast ecosystems made of giant mushrooms and commensal, non-photosynthetic plants. Productivity is further increased by the dragons' agriculture. The Cavern is home to many endemic species and that includes several birds. The "normal" birds of Drecel can often be overlooked by the Basilisks, venomous sophont paravians, or otterns, derived quadrupedal seabirds. Additionally flying birds have increased competition in the form of fanwings, flighted lizards, and hoofed bats. This selection of decidedly neornithes birds are nonetheless uniquely adapted in their own right.

1. Lanternfowl. This goose-like bird is so named for the soft yellow glow of the bioluminescent skin on their faces, their fatty meat, and the oils produced to waterproof their feathers. They are a ubiquitous, semi-aquatic grazer that feeds on mushgrasses, squirts, insects, and small fish. While they have good vision, their sense of smell and hearing is average at best. It wasn't until the widespread adoption of streetlamps and other forms of lighting that their range expanded into deeper into the cave. Males have four fleshy waddles on their face. During the breeding season, males dance, bobbing their heads and flashing their lights to impress females. Females select males with the longest and flashiest dances although sometimes to their detriment. Lanternfowl have been domesticated by dragons and are kept for their meat, eggs, feathers, but most peculiarly their oil. The basis of the cavern's ecosystem is fungal in nature. A side effect of this is an increase in fungal parasites, both specialized and opportunistic. Infections from keratin-eating fungi (ex. ringworm) are especially common problems, able to ravage an creature's skin, hair, fur, feathers, horns, claws, and scales. Lanternfowl have a novel method of preventing infection, their oils contain enzymes that bind to ergosterol, a sterol found in fungal cells that's equivalent to cholesterol found in animal cells. The presence of these oils prevent spores from multiplying and infecting an animal's integument. Its for these properties that lanternfowl are highly regarded, not just by dragons who use these oils as an active ingredient in topical anti-fungals, but by other animals who will placidly approach the birds and rub against them, hoping to reap the benefits.
2. Stalackite. This bird of prey prefers to roost and hunt near the roof of the cave and along the walls. It has chimeric features: large eyes and facial disks like an owl, short, broad wings that gift it exceptional agility when hunting along the spires and columns, long legs, and zygodactyl feet. The latter two traits allow them to climb with ease, hanging upside down or on the side with one foot. They hunt other birds, non-hoofed bats, and hatchling scuttlers.

The remaining three species are in a clade together known as scentbirds. In order to evade predators with acute hearing, the males instead emit a highly concentrated, smelly "puff" from a gland in their wingpit. The females assess the quality of the male's puff, the strength of which is associated to his health and viability as a mate.
3. Cinnabin. This is a typical scentbird. The male's scent glands produce a compound similar to cinnamaldehyde, offering them a similar scent to cinnamon. Because of this pleasent scent, they are tolerated unlike other species...
4. Musking Tweeter. Gathering in huge, noisy, smelly mobs, these obnoxious blue-feathered birds use their upturned beaks similar to Earth's avocets, for sweeping back and forth in the water in search of fish and insect larvae. Despite flocks being vary apparent, they persist in high numbers regardless.
5. Banded Smeasent. The largest of the scentbirds have weaponized their glands, not unlike a skunk. Present in both males and females, their enlarged glands produce a truly horrid smelling and long-lasting spray. This is the smeasent's primary defense and is a metabolically costly one to produce. Before spraying, they will croak, flap their wings loudly, and stamp their feet to deter a predator. Males employ spurs to fight each other in contest for mates .