#hraetnug

"It has wings but does not fly, and its feet are like those of the camel. When the time comes for it to lay eggs, it raises its eyes to the sky and looks to see if the star called Vergiliae, the Pleiades, has appeared, for it will not lay its eggs until that star has risen. When the Hraetnug sees the star, around the month of June, it digs in the ground, deposits its eggs in the hole it has made and covers them with sand. When it gets up from the hole, it immediately forgets the eggs and never returns to them. The effect of the calm, mild air seems to be that the sand in the summer heat hatches the eggs, bringing forth the young."

Honestly, it's been a week, so just a quick one this time. I genuinely had no idea what creature this this prompt related to, until last night I was lying in bed trying to sleep, and suddenly it seemed So Obvious… Curious if I've guessed this one right!

I ended up taking this one pretty literally. I was originally planning on drawing some manner of Beast, but the wings AND the egg-laying made me lean away from this. Rather than a bird, I ended up going for a fairly generic dragon (with That Head which keeps on coming up for some reason on the most unlikely creatures); many dragon illustrations don't look like they could fly anyway, so maybe the wings are more for balance (or cooling, perhaps?). The feet are taken pretty much directly from camels (including the pad underneath that is just visible on the raised foot); this along with the sand makes me think this is a desert dwelling creature.

I genuinely can't work out what Vergiliae relates to, but we also have the Pleiades in the sky.

I'm never going to miss the opportunity to draw cute baby animals, so have a trio of baby Hraetnugs clawing their way out of the sand once they have hatched :)

Has wings but does not fly made me initially think of flightless birds -- ostriches, then penguins. But I didn't really want to just draw a bird. Maybe something that looks like it has wings? Like a sea turtle's fins? That would also work for laying eggs in sand and leaving them.

Alas, the animal in question has feet "like that of a camel," which a sea turtle obviously does not have. That detail made me think of tortoises, which are also shelled beasts, but they're equipped with definite feet.

A tortoise, however, has nothing resembling wings, on account of it being a tortoise and having no need to fly or swim anywhere. I played around with the idea of giving it some hybrid fin-foot thing, like if a sea turtle also had legs, but that looked awkward. Now they're kinda normal legs, if a bit thick, with pseudo-fin-things on them. I dunno, it seemed fun. And I was right.

Still need wings. I did recall several species of turtles with spiky scutes. There's Graptemys nigrinoda, or the black-knobbed map turtle, for one. Though a few in Graptemys apparently have that notable ridge and spiny edges too.

Tried out some different shapes -- boring process, trust me, no interesting sketches to share there -- and decided that editing the shell would be a good way to kinda get that wing thing going.

I wanted to keep it looking like a turtle/tortoise to some extent, so I didn't want to go full nodosauridae, though making long spiky parts definitely made me think of them. In particular, borealopelta and sauropelta. So I channeled a bit of that armored tank into the shell design.

Fun piece to work on. Ah, to be a hraetnug, gazing at the stars, digging in the sand, and never having to put up with any kids. Truly living the dream. I especially like how her stubby little wings look. She's trying so hard to look majestic, with her fat little tummy and her stumpy wings and goofy beak. I love this dumb imaginary bird.

The Hraetnug

The Hraetnug is a flightless bird found in grasslands and sand dune ecosystems in North America. It is three to four feet in height, and has long brown feathers speckled with white.

The diet of the Hraetnug is varied, and they will happily consume almost anything they encounter, from leafy plants and fruits to insects to human trash. They are also capable hunters of small animals, and will make use of their long necks to snap live rodents and reptiles off the ground, or of their sturdy, thick-skinned feet to pin down snakes.

Both male and female Hraetnugs have long tail feathers, which they can fan out behind them during mating displays. Hraetnugs who put on particularly impressive displays can often pull multiple mates, of both sexes, and many Hraetnugs live as a group with their mates for several years or for life.

Female Hraetnugs build their nests on the ground, scraping a burrow in the soil and partially burying their eggs. Sandy or dry soil seems to be their preferred environment for such a nest. They (and their mate or mated group, if they have such a long-term relationship) will remain in the area to watch over their eggs, but seldom approach the nest directly to avoid drawing the attention of predators to their defenseless young. Instead, they will bring attention to themselves by acting injured and, once the would-be egg-eater has been drawn away from the nest, sprint away at a speed potentially exceeding forty miles per hour.