A Day in the Life of a Dinosaur- Parvquatallus the Microraptor

After a while I have finally finished another chapter of a Day in the Life of a Dinosaur.

If you don't know what this series is for the newcomers here, a few months back I began to think of making a series where I could give an imaginitive but scientifically accurate depiction of what a day may look liek in the dinosaurs we ponder about, how the moved, breathed, functioned, behaved, and what it would be like to see see it in it's natural habitat.

So I created this series as sort of a "distraction" from the modern inaccuracies we see in depictions of dinosaurs today.

For the other episodes that are not necessary to read this chapter but felt that I do wish everyone would enjoy and comment, here they are:

Sicarius the Velociraptor

Parens the T. rex

Piscius the Spinosaurus

And on for what is in store for the 4th entry of A Day in the Life of a Dinosaur:

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Today we have a Micraptor named Parvquatallus. The named is based off Latin words, combining "quattor" meaning "four", "ala" which can mean "wing", and "parvos", meaning "small."

I looked at documentaries and articles on the latest and most accept theories on how Microraptor lived, well, what we think of how it lived.

I based it's behaviour off of some modern day birds.

He is a male looking for material to build a nest until something unscheduled comes in his way...

And without further ado, I hope you really enjoy this as I did spend a lot of time writing this and enjoying it, as I hope you will enjoy reading it.

I apologise for any spelling errors I may have made and not noticed, I will hopefully soon correct them. By ALL MEANS do not be afraid to be honest with me, if you hated it you can be honest and say so below, I appreciate ANY critique, positive or negative.

***

Parvquatallus looks down at the thick forest beneath him, full of abundant greens. As he glides swiftly through the air, without nervousness he looks through safe places to grab for loose branches, feathers, and leaves.

He is building a nest, and it must be a formidable one so he can attract a mate.

He must be wary about his surroundings, for in the air he is swift and graceful, but if on the ground and exposed to terrestrial dinosaurs, he could be easily outrun and preyed upon.

He looked to his right and saw an old nest from that came from a Sinornthosaurus. It looked abandoned, but the nest material would suit well for his nest. Parvquatallus swiftly turns left and stretches out his elegant wings to grapple onto a tree. He gracefully climbs up the tree, and then falls backward, immediately making a 180 degree turn and glides towards the nest with a couple of flaps.

Just near the nest, a lone Sinornthosaurus, who we shall call Avisdan, watches higher above the tree. With long, grooved teeth are shown, as he squawks excitedly. He has been waiting for hours to find food for his mate and babies, after all his babies will die if he doesn’t find food.

With the breeding season for Micraptor going on, Avisdan has a perfect chance to set a trap for passing Microraptors looking for nest material.

All Avisdan had to do was just chase Parvquatallus down, and once on the ground, he was going to have food for him and his family, though he would have to bring the prey piece by piece, but it was essential for the survival of his family.

Parvquatallus lands on the branch holding up the nest. He climbs on it, carefully attaching each of his limbs’ claws to the tree, careful not to fall. He reaches the nest, and bites off a chunk of the nest.

It was around the fifth trip of his to bring back nest material to his determined nesting site, and there would be much, much, much more to come, but he needed to get a mate.

That is if he survives.

Parvquatallus begins to climb higher up the tree, ready to glide down once he reached high enough.

Avisdan has his opportunity now. He silent and quickly climbs up his tree, and jumps off, gliding downwards straight to Parvquatallus. Avisdan stretches out his hind claws, holding his wings apart. Avisdan squawks, however, this was a mistake.

Parvquatallus rotates his head almost halfway, and quickly jumps off the tree, swiftly turning around. He begins to glide away into the dense forest. He began to worry.

His whole life depended on the choices he was about to make. He remembered the time when his other fellow nestling was chased down by a Sinornthosaurus as a juvenile, and how he was mercilessly bitten around the neck, and eaten alive, flapping his wings in pain…

He wasn’t ideally ready and most certainly willing to meet the same fate.

Avisdan lands on the place of the tree where Parvquatallus was on. He hisses out of anger, scratching the bark off the tree on what could have been the flesh of Parvquatallus.

Its now a choice of Fight or Flight. The hunt is on.

Avisdan quickly turns around and glides to the same, long, and rough branch that held Parvquatallus. Parvquatallus stretches out his wings, and he raises his wide, long, and his exquisite black feathers, attempting to intimidate Avisdan. While doing this he lowers his head, hissing like the squawk of a raptor, holding out his claws.

All it does is simply startle Avisdan, and causes him to hiss back at Parvquatallus in a similar manner.

Parvquatallus is now scared, realizing that something was causing Avisdan to not hold back. Intimidation has not worked.

Parvquatallus then jumps off the branch, gliding to another tree. He tries hard to think about what to do. Should he try biting and injuring Avisdan? Should he try to hide?

He thought he should try to hide first, but in order to glide fast enough to out-fly Avisdan, he was gonna have to make a long swoop down and quickly elevate up, and make a zig-zag route among the thick forest. He could make the heavy foliage and forest work to his advantage.

Avisdan is quick to make sure to follow Parvquatallus. He too thinks of what he should do. Avisdan is somewhat comforted when he remembers that there are other mammals and birds in the forest to feed on. But the mammals usually only came out at night and the birds were much harder to catch. Avisdan knew that if he did not bring back this meal to his family, any day one of his chicks could die and his mate would lose more energy by the clock.

Avisdan then begins planning on how he should attempt to hunt down this Microraptor. It was clear that this was no dumb-witted animal like the mammals he occasionally dealt with, why those poor little beasts couldn’t ever amount to any defense.

He figured he could force the Microraptor to go lower and lower, eventually having to land on the forest floor, and once there he could easily outrun Parvquatallus and mortally injure him. But he had not accounted for the thick forest surrounding him, and it was evident that Parvquatallus was attempting to use this to his advantage. Avisdan now has to be careful to not lose sight and focus on Parvquatallus.

Parvquatallus swoops down unexpectedly. Careful not to prove to be erroneous in the fast speeds he was gliding at, he quickly lands on a tree and shuffled a bit upward. After quickly climbing a few feet and turns around and falls back, gliding in the opposite direction. Avisdan follows in a similar pattern.

Perfect, Parvquatallus felt a thrill in himself. He may live to have another day to start building his nest.

If he survived this he probably wouldn’t have the energy and stability to go out and look for nest material.

Once Avisdan seemed ready to fall back and glide in the same direction as Parvquatallus, Parvquatallus quickly turns left. Avisdan turns left as well. Then Parvquatallus turns right, quickly and making sure it was unexpected of Avisdan. Avisdan begins to turn right as well, looking carefully down at this Microraptor, careful not lose sight of him over the branches full of dark and bright green foliage.

Parvquatallus looks quickly down, seeing he is much closer to the ground than before. As he glides by he passes by and hears the chirps of birds throughout the branches. He hears the calls of the herbivores below. He then swiftly turns a sharp left, causing Avisdan to do so as well. Avisdan then hits small branches, catching onto them, losing the chase of Parvquatallus.

Parvquatallus felt a sense of relief, but it was as if cruel fortune was destined for him as he mistakenly crashed into a thicker branch, even tumbling metres below. He is quick and grapples onto a thick branch of the tree. He has lost the same amount of time to escape as Avisdan lost the amount of time to hunt.

The hunt was still on.

Parvquatallus is quick to climb a few feet, realizing he is still close to the ground…

Too close.

He thinks about how far Avisdan is to him, about his options. He could climb as high as possible, and then jump at the last second, and hope for the best… But he could jump down and run away into hiding… But he didn’t have the legs to run… It seemed like either way would be almost borderline suicidal… He decides to climb higher up than to jump down.

He was going to have to use up all the energy he had carefully been saving to build his nest and instead use it to climb as fast as possible from Avisdan. If he survived maybe he could find a few twigs to bring home.

But he was going to have to do one thing at a time.

While Parvquatallus was forming his plan, Avisdan was thankful for the luck of Parvquatallus’s mistake. Avisdan had to be fast and prepared to not lose and trap the Microraptor, seeing how he was going to try as high as possible and glide away.

Avisdan has cached up to the same tree that holds Parvquatallus. Frantically Parvquatallus moves his arms and feet up against the tree, trying to gain as much height as possible. Avisdan is faster. The close to one metre long animals are rapidly climbing up the long thick tree, their tails remaining still and calm, though their bodies showed otherwise. Avisdan reaches only centimetres from Parvquatallus.

Time to take flight… But this, again, was not powered flight.

Parvquatallus spreads his wings and dives swiftly to the bottom, at a sharp turn, and begins to try what had worked earlier, making unpredictable movements in his directions of flight, as fast and sharp as possible. Avisdan is somewhat prepared for this.

Whether it was Avisdan’s hunger, or his love towards his baby infants that were probably squawking for food right now, and his mate who was most likely in need of nutrients to properly take care of the young, Avisdan had perfectly kept up with Parvquatallus, slowly reaching the brown floor, with greens down below, a haven for Avisdan but absolute hell for Parvquatallus.

Parvquatallus is now even more frantic than before. He attempts to take one more sharp turn, only inches above the bushes…

Avisdan is quick to take the same angle.

After a few seconds, the raptors are on the ground, opening an opportunity for Avisdan but sure death for Parvquatallus… But he wasn’t gonna go down without a fight.

Parvquatallus turns around and hisses a sound similar to a roar, raising his head’s feathers to startle Avisdan. He stretches out his front wings and mildly shakes them in front of Avisdan.

Avisdan stops running, and he stops in front of Parvquatallus. Avisdan hisses at him too, with a little stretch from his wings.

Parvquatallus then hopped forward and attempted to bite Avisdan. He caught a snip of the wing, bit hard and scratched his wing with his teeth. Avisdan screeched in pain.

Parvquatallus hoped the bite was painful enough to force Avisdan to take a moment to get control of himself while Parvquatallus attempted to run away.

Avisdan would have taken more time for the pain to weaken but he thought of his fledglings, helpless, his mate, getting hungry guarding the children… He must take the pain and continue in the pursuit of this Microraptor.

Avisdan began to run, and in a matter of ill-fated seconds, Avisdan already had caught up to Parvquatallus. Parvquatallus was only inches away from the tree when he felt his tail pulled back, falling onto the ground.

He quickly turned over, and with that Avisdan leaped atop Parvquatallus. Parvquatallus bit the neck of Avisdan, making Avisdan to squawk awkwardly in pain.

Avisdan realized without having food for a while he was being deprived of the effectiveness of his hunting. His body was already irking in exhaustion.

It was no longer going to irk.

Parvquatallus quickly leaped atop the tree and began to climb. Avisdan began to walk towards the tree when he heard the foliage shake next to him and suddenly searing pain went through out his whole body. He felt blood to begin to poor out of his body, along with teeth deeply penetrated into his fragile body. He then was dropped to the ground and felt his neck latched onto to and in seconds his neck was almost severed off…

A Raptorex began to feast on what was Avisdan… His body already seemed distorted, as Parvquatallus watched from the branch high above form the Raptorex…

He would live to see another day…

But Avisdan’s family might no longer be able to…

Parvquatallus took moments to realize what he had in mind before what happened… He was still shaken about his stroke of luck…He had just enough energy to pick off some branches and twigs to continue building his nest.

As he began to glide away he imagined the image of Avisdan, slowly being bitten piece by piece from the Raptorex… He was rather frightened by the thought.

Nature had saved him this time… Maybe it was luck, maybe it was fate for his clan to be passed on. As his glossy black feathers shined throughout his wings by the strong sunlight that burst through the openings of the foliage above, he looked forward to the thought of raising a brooch.

He felt a sense of hardship to come, having to be the one to go out and hunt while the female takes care of the fledglings… It was going to be hard, he knew it.

But it was his instinct, what he was born for, what he had fought for in the moment that occurred minutes ago. He didn’t meet the same fate as some of his siblings, not to mention he had no plans for it either.

He jumped off another tree to head off to an area where dry branches and twigs were common. He already felt a sense of pride in himself, a pride in which he hoped it would imprint on his fledglings.

 ***

I ask that you PLEASE leave a comment on your thoughts, any critique is appreciated.

Thanks for reading,

-Raptor-401