#this is unavoidable

Lupin is a great tit, because great tits are actually the most deranged and feral of small birds, although few people except for bird-lovers know about this "skeleton in the closet" of theirs. But these cuties can murder other small birds and eat their brains… In captivity, a tit is a universal destroyer of everything it can reach, and there were cases when these little demons unscrewed screws and dropped shelves. So their beak is not only a murder weapon, but also a universal tool of chaos.

Yata is a jackdaw because, as I mentioned earlier, the word "crow" is woven into his full name. I was also told on here that Yatagarasu is the name of a Japanese deity in the form of a large crow with three legs, which only reinforced my already existing association of this character with a corvid bird. But he’s quite thin and light so he didn't look like a raven or a crow in my head, I needed something more elegant and nimble. The choice fell on a jackdaw as a smaller and more graceful member of the corvids, but no less quick-witted.

Zenigata is a grey-faced buzzard because I initially associated him with some diurnal bird of prey. Not with an owl because owls are quite sedentary and prefer to hunt from an "ambush" in short strikes from a perch, while he is all for prolonged persistent pursuit; and not with a falcon because falcons are too small and fit, and we have a really bulky man here. At the same time an eagle would hardly care about a small titmouse. So I landed in the middle, on a not too small but not too large buzzard. Plus, this particular species is common in Japan.

The sizes lineup is not entirely realistic, but this was done on purpose to make it more convenient to draw their interactions with each other. I'll also do the rest of the gang as birds, but a little later ;)