avian n.

The saffron sky was obscured by multitudes of black winged avians dipping in short angry circles. A swarm of the avians had surrounded the lifeboat and, as he watched, they lifted it slightly off the ground in the direction of the sea.

As flocks of dunlin or redshank stream and wheel and soar and quiver over our estuaries, so above the great tide-flooded cultivated regions of these worlds the animated clouds of avians manoeuvred, each cloud a single centre of consciousness. Presently, like our own winged waders, the litle avians would settle, the huge volume of the cloud shrinking to a mere film upon the ground, a sort of precipitate along the fringe of the receding tide.

He went over and took the avian in his arms. The beaked, crested head rested on the man’s breast and the body shuddered.

He pointed out a cluster of buildings, tall garishly colored cylinders erected in steel and plastic, half a mile off the road. The avians walking between them wore embroidered jackets over their feathers.

Seated securely on the damp, slick stone, he found he could easily see over the heads of even the tall avians in the crowd, which consisted mostly of local humans sprinkled with a few warmly bundled thranx and a smattering of other alien types.

We looked it up in the Guide to Sapient Species, but there is only one avian, and this is not it.

The black velvet avian flew up to within five meters of the surface and jabbered at her.

They were jealous of their position as the only sentient avians in the FSP.

Something crosses the sky above the volcanoes and Aiah’s heart leaps as she realises that it’s an avian, a winged humanoid.

One lineage of avians has produced Epona’s sophont, the uther. Singularly the most fascinating physiological trait of the species is the interdependence of the parent and neonate.

The overseer looked on the extent of its works around Delta Pavonis. It knew of the previous cleansing, the wiping out of the avians who had last inhabited this local sector of space.