I don't know how you'd set it up but it would be really funny to force Tobias into a mission where he HAS to morph some other Bird of Prey because he would spend the entire time complaining endlessly about how the tail feathers are all wrong or something.
That would be amazing! God knows Tobias doesn't have nearly enough problems, and definitely needs more.
The obvious one would be a night mission that forces him to give in and just acquire a damn owl already. It's so funny to me that he goes the whole series without that morph, despite its obvious utility, out of sheer stubbornness. But even Tobias would (grudgingly) use owl if there was a mission that needed a very skilled flier at night. Heck, he might even enjoy it despite himself.
I could see him being forced into golden eagle morph if they need to carry a lot of weight in raptor shape — maybe he's assisting a fellow Animorph in snake form to the battle, like in #21. Tobias would haaaate it, but he'd probably also see the point in needing a shape that big.
Alternately, could there be a mission with a lot of close-quarters speed flying where he has to take on his other nemesis, the peregrine falcon? Maybe something where the Animorphs attack a yeerk base on the side of a cliff and need an ultra-fast getaway. I could also see Tobias — through his teeth — admitting that peregrine falcon is cool, the way he does with mallard. Golden eagle would probably be the only one he would never ever come around on, since he sees them as bullies and for him that'll always be a hard "no."
hey you know what i just realized? tobias goes the entire series without ever once complaining about red-winged blackbirds. this is unbelievable. in spring the horny little bastards do absolutely nothing but a) bweedleBWEEEEEEE and b) bodyslam every single raptor they can find.
i have seen so many miserable hawks falling out of trees under the pingpong barrage of enthusiastically deranged alpha bro blackbird aggro. i have seen an owl waddling along the edge of a cornfield as these guys do highschool jock crimes to their head. i have seen a blue heron get bodychecked into the water. i have seen so many ravens go down like cool goths getting hit by a firehose. i have seen falcons doing us airforce evasive maneuvers to get away, and failing. i have seen an actual factual bald eagle making the sad piccolo noise of a baby elf forsaken by god as it desperately tries to gain altitude with these tiny monsters hanging off its ass.
i can only surmise that tobias's feelings for red-winged blackbirds can't be printed in a middle grade novel series about wartime bodyhorror atrocities because the entirety of the thought is just:
FUCK.
He does spend a lot of time trash-talking corvids, so presumably they're included in that rant. But yes, he needs this morph too.
California is far enough south that it's just possible that most of them head further north in the spring for breeding season. While the entire continental USA is technically in the 'year round' range of red wing blackbirds, their breeding range doesn't stretch any further south than Michigan's upper peninsula. So Tobias might be mostly spared the scourge, I don't know enough about them to be sure - this is just based on a glance at the wikipedia article about them.
