Rocs or Rukhs are gigantic birds. They live largely in sandy deserts, such as Thiamim, or Wal Rukh, which is an island with a large internal desert. Nevertheless, they must be close enough where they can fly to the sea, although with their considerable flying range that is usually not a problem. The reason for that is that one of the main staples of their diets are sea-serpents, so they swoop and gather up a large one in their claws. As carnivores, they will eat many large animals, but most humans are too small to make a decent mouthfuls, so humans rarely have anything to fear. As a consequence, giants fear them much more than humans do. Giants are large enough to make a decent snack. Other things that rocs eat include mantichores, centaurs, griffins, harpies and hippogriffs.
They are immense, on the same size scale as a blue whale, only airborne, and their gigantic wings will often have shadows that will blacken out entire sections of land. (For the nit-pickers among you, yes, I am aware that a bird of that size would never get off the air on Earth. There are various reasons, having to do with the differing minerals that exist on Tu, which they store in their gizzard like a chicken, why such objections do not apply here. Or to a griffon or hippogriff or dragon, for that matter. Nevertheless, though their bodies may be as long as a hundred feet long, their wingspan is from one to two thousand feet long. BIIIIIG birds.)
They lay eggs which are as large as small houses.
Their greatest natural enemy is the pheonix...when they try to eat a pheonix, it bursts into flame, killing the roc and a new pheonix reemerges from the flame.
To my knowledge (or until I change my mind), this is the largest animal on Tu.
Though they have an enormoous range they can fly in, they are sometimes clumsy fliers, and cannot reach great heights. They can cruise long, but they cannot cruise high. A group of griffins attacking them at once can often bring them crashing to the ground. Often high mountains will effectively contain them, since they cannot rise above truly high mountains, unless an updraft helps them.
They prefer warm climes, and will rarely venture where it gets cold. Being carnivores, they keep their numbers low, for too many rocs in an area will depopulate the animal population, and then the rocs will starve to death...so it's a self-correcting problem.
In form they resemble to a certain extent reddish falcons, save their eyes are smaller in proportion, of course, and their legs are much thicker, more like a dinosaur's such as Tyrannosaurus Rex. Their bill is hooked like many falcons' are.
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