I took some liberties since the description is artfully minimal.
Inspiration: robins, vampire bats, vultures, stilted quadsuits likeΒ theseΒ kindaΒ guys.
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I wanted it to be comfortable, safe, functional, agile, and have enough padding and pointy bits to actually fight in.
The neck could easily be made longer, especially when replacing direct vision with cameras, and that would ease the strain on the neck by allowing the resting position to be tilted down instead of craning the head to be horizontal; you could add in ways for the neck to be jointed side to side and up and down and with the training and stuff it shouldn't be too hard to learn how to work with. I wasn't totally sure what to do with the face but went with straight-up birdy. Lets us protect Dick's head more and gives us the extra beak and teeth weapons with more reach. It's easily operable with head and mouth movements alone as-is, and the advantage of not adding a longer neck is that since the eyes line up with his own it will work even if an EMP or whatever shorts out the suit's power, though even then you could work around that some with mirrors.
The legs can be made with something likeΒ pogostilts, which should add significantly to agility. There's plenty of space in the torso for gas masks, cooling, armour, sound modulation, utility belts, and whatever other stuff you wanna cram in there. Talons can be pretty easily hooked up to beΒ mechanically moved by the fingers, especially if the weight is braced on the elbow area or through an exoskeleton, so full movement is definitely possible there.
The wings should be plenty long enough to fly with, and I looked it up and youΒ could actually about cut the size in half and get still something workableΒ I think. Broad and short is best for mobility, feathers are good for silence and are still fairly functional with some damage or loss, unlike a membrane, and help with masking the actual mechanical movements involved. A piggybacker could also be possible since there is no membrane between the wing-elbow and thigh to prevent the piggybacker's legs from moving down enough to hold on. For the feathers there are materials that curl up or flatten out when exposed to heat or an electric charge, or else just pull them mechanically in in one direction and they are rigid in the other. The keel I added stiffens the torso somewhat, which might be a pain for Dick wanting to do acrobatics, but helps with back-bracing, padding the front in case of falls and attacks, masking the human shape, and keeping the weight off of Dick himself. It could be streamlined or nixed though probably (this tech and ergonomics stuff is not my area of expertise, so I'm sure there are better ways to do things even without bringing in the batman factor.
The tail can be mechanically set up to move by itself left-right with any movement, like thoseΒ toy snakes,Β and then snapped into place for when it's actually needed in flight stabilization, where I imagine it's moved via buttons near the toes or something. You could have a spot to hook the feet spurs into on the tail to streamline the body and stop the legs from just dangling, and then unhook again to land. The benefit of not having the arms or legs attached to the wings already is that there's for an enemy or the environment to grab onto to mess up one's balance or prevent movement. Feathers instead of membrane also helps with that.
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The biggest issues with this design are:
I have no idea how they move the wings except either electronically or by moving the arms from the stilts into the chest cavity or something. You did mention they were ungainly and flopping about or whatever, so you could make them with a material that is flexible at rest but then when activated - heat or electricity again becomes rigid and jointed, so they'd just trail all over when not flying, but that does pose a tripping hazard. They could simply fold in all the way like a bird, which would work fine but reduce some of the creep factor of six limbs and the extra obfuscation of the feathers and membrane and how it brings batman's cloak/cape to mind.
Not easily accessible. Without a mouth visible Dick can't readily communicate with the hard of hearing, which is also a problem if a flashbang or silence spell or something goes off. You could work around it with a more humanoid-ish hand-talon designs though for sign language. I've got them as anisodactyl (3 toes in front, one in back) but they could be modified to something with a 4-1 or something else that could be used with sign or else a modified version used by the Batfam that can still be understood by the general signing public, likeΒ this modified 2-1 ninja turtle fingerspelling chart.Β Sign languages tend to rely quite a bit on facial expression and body language, but parts of the face could be madeΒ motileΒ viaΒ animatronicsΒ to help with that, for which the ears will certainly be an asset.
There's a lot of material to leave at a crime scene or just all over Gotham that could break the ruse. The feathers, the extra bulk to the suit, etc. Making them extra resistant to tearing or breakage means they can be used as a grip or snag, which is also undesirable. Potentially one could either fake a crypto-organic material or make them of something that if it's left out overnight it disintegrates or something, but either is a sci-fi solution and neither is easy or fully reliable.
Either way though I think it works pretty well for what it is! And it's not like normal batman suits don't have a DNA problem themselves, let alone that silly face-revealing mask setup, when in canon they aren't even going your possession route to obfuscate things.
digital art of Songbird, alias of Dick Greyson from the Two Sides of the Same Coin fic. When acting as Songbird, Dick pretends to be a cryptid monster by wearing a fullbody quadsuit costume. It is vaguely birdlike, or maybe like an evil griffin.
The main illustrations are sketchy diagrams in which you can see where Dick's body, in red, is positioned within the suit, outlined in green.
He has stilts built in to make the legs longer, labelled "Stilts with controllable talons". Even longer stilts add to the arms such that his hands are operating from the suit's elbows, giving him a more comfortable diagonally upright stance. He is supported in this position by a keel under his torso, which sweeps back into a feathered tail labelled "counterbalance and rudder".
The keel also supports a wide, deep, roomy chest area that imitates the muscular breast of a bird needed to operate is huge wings, which are housed on the mid-back with plenty of space for mechanical or electronic motors. The wings are long, spindly, and knobbly, with an extra elbow joint and each section being longer than Dick's torso. They have a "hand" portion that is weightbearing, with two talons, and have a patagium labelled "Flexible membrane" in the front between the wrist and the shoulder, and feathers with no membrane on the outer and rear portions. There is a sketch of the dorsal view of the suit with the wings outstretched, labelled as having "broad wingtips: tight manoeuvrability," "slotted feathers: silence", and "bad feathers, sorry". There is also a sketch of a feather, labelled "Feathers retract by curling" and then that feather curled into a ball, as well as a version of the drawing with all the feathers curled in, making the wings take up much less space.
The head is birdlike, labelled "protective helmet, extra sensory with screens, speakers, etc". It has a beak with two jagged toothy protrusions on either side, labelled "stabbity beak".
Overall, Songbird is about as tall as he would be without the suit, able to look people in the eye, but much larger overall. There are secondary illustrations of the outer view with colours and a shaggy layer of feathers further obfuscating the human form within. The main body, shaggy neck, and pointy ears are a dark grey or black, with a bright red neck, and breast. Shoulders and thighs are batman-grey, and talons and beak are a dull, creamy grey-yellow, with the former appearing gradually as scales while the latter is situated on a face bear of feathers and a lighter colour like aged bone. The eyes are blank white with a thick black mask-shaped outline, pulling in a reminiscence to a traditional vigilante's domino mask.
