Birds of Excelsior

[Eos]

Hail fellow birdwatchers! It occasionally gets to that point you're making up your own quests, and this past week was such a game for me. I took up the hobby to collect one of each tameable bird in Britannia, which includes all the various named small-bodied "birds", and of course the uniquely depicted chicken, crane and eagle. As of right now, that yields 27 total:

Chickens and all small-bodied birds, except tropical, can be easily found in Delucia.

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In order to know which were left to find, I researched online and cross-referenced UO beastiaries, though no one site seemed to list them all. I also came across the text to an in-game book https://uo2.stratics.com/lore-and-histo ... britannia/ called Birds of Britannia, however, it seems to list some birds that I am fairly certain do not exist on this shard, such as the canary, dove, shrike, roadrunner, hummingbird, owl, goatsucker, duck and swan. From the beastiaries and book it would seem there is a bird I am however definitely missing, "a hawk", but I have yet to come across one. Have you? I am inspired to write our own Birds of Excelsior compendium and if so, would like to of course include them all, whether friendly or hostile, tameable or not. Here is the list of birds I have collected so far, and three non-tameables. Do you know of any other birds, and if so, where I might find them? Thank you for your help and happy gaming to you! ★

a chickadee
a chicken
a crane
a crossbill
a crow
a cuckoo
an eagle
a finch
a kingfisher
a lapwing
a lovebird (non-tameable; Cove)
a magpie
a nightingale
a nuthatch
a parrot (non-tameable; deco add-on)
a plover
a raven
a skylark
a sparrow
a stork (non-tameable, featured in Lorelay Baby Place add-on)
a starling
a swallow
a swift
a tern
a thrush
a towhee
a tropical bird
a warbler
a wren
a woodpecker

[arrow]

swoop ostard harpy hiryu (hawks in north woods of Yew) phoenix

[Zanazaz]

SI I gather shrunken pets do not take up a follower slot?

[Eos]

Right Zanazaz, they become a kind of inert statue rather than a controllable pet, called a "shrink", so they don't count towards your active pets even though the shrink still bears your name on it. (The name is trivial, as anyone of appropriate level in possession of the shrink can open the pet and assume ownership.) You can thus have as many shrinks as you can store or carry, though they weigh quite a bit for a small statue at 25 stones each regardless of if they are a shrink of a small two-ounce bird or an enormous ten-ton dragon. (In comparison, a granite statue weighs 10 stones.)

Oh! »»-----Arrow!-------► I live in Yew and thought I'd scoured the forest many times, but per your word I ran all over it once again and...

"...for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.” Hermann Hesse

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͕͗T͕͕͗͗H͕͕͗͗E͕͕͗͗R͕͕͗͗E͕͗ ͕͗S͕͕͗͗H͕͕͗͗E͕͗ ͕͗B͕͕͗͗L͕͕͗͗O͕͕͗͗W͕͕͗͗S͕͕͗͗!͕͕͗͗!͕͕͗͗!͕͗ Thank you! My small bird collection, as far as I know, is now complete! ★ And here I was beginning to believe Hawks were a myth! Thank you also for your other mentions. I had forgotten the hostile Swoop and Phoenix, which reminds too of the Labyrinth's Pyre, all of which should be included. The feathered Hiryu eluded my subconscious size bias, and the half-bird Harpy and featherless Ostard narrowly escaped my puritanical parameters, but alas I concede, these too should be included or at least honorably mentioned in any Excelsian Bird Guide as well. Thank you so much for your help! ʕʘ̅͜ʘ̅ʔ Here is a sneak peek of my upcoming bestseller:

Fully illustrated guidebook to all 34 Birds of Excelsior, limited edition, release date TBA!

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If anyone else knows of any other birds, do tell! Thanks again!

[arrow]

copy for my library plz

[Disberon]

Does the carrier pigeon in Britain count, by the waypoint?

[Eos]

Sweetness a first customer and she ain't even done yet! I knew this would be a hit! First step Excelsior, next step the World! (っ◔◡◔)っ❤ Thanks that'll motivate me to finish the book. So far I've got 12 illustrated and 17 described, so it'll be a ways to go yet, because then I have to trim down each encyclopedic volume so they'll all fit into a meager 100 pages, as I am the ᵗᶤᶰᶤᵉˢᵗ bit long-winded and each bird I research has some unique feature or characteristics that would surely intrigue even the bone-crushingest of warriors!

Thank you Disberon! How could I have forgotten the Britain Carrier Pigeon?! Talk about under one's nose! And for that matter, this reminds of the not-terribly-common "personal spawner" NPCs which includes a "Flamingo", and a quick vendor search shows Athens in Town Center has "A Turkey Spawner" (but what does it look like?!) So there we have +3 more birds, plus a couple I forgot to count last time, for a grand whopping total of 39, pushing the release date back to sometime in 2029... by which point it will surely be outdated with the new additions of ever more named birds!

Hinting at new additions of birds, because clearly that's what the Excelsian public is eagerly clamoring for, I think this would also be a great in game quest! One of the empty houses in Yew could be repurposed with an NPC like "Audobon" who issues a quest book to collect one of every bird which he uses to make his paintings from. Maybe have two separate quests, an easy mode for the non-hostiles and a hard mode for the hostiles (just make them tameable -- if the various dragons are tameable, why isn't anything?) Then the reward is a random chance at a statue (animated? audible?) or painting of the various birds in that category.

Anyhow, thanks for your interest, help and support! And again, should any spy any others please give the headsup! Sometimes the most obvious of things will remain as equally the most unnoticed...

[culichi]

dont think anyone mentioned ostards yet. id also like a copy of your book when you finish it.

[+Colibri]

Awesome quest!

[Possum12]

Very impressive - love your work. Nice to see this sort of thing in the game.

Sort of Bird related:- Was always hoping that when it came time for the taming BoD system to get its review like tailoring got awhile ago, that we would see 2 or 3 "bird" only Large BoD's introduced. Say a Birds of Prey one, a Scavenger type & a"Cutsie" one as a few examples.