I'll take what may be a superficially unpopular opinion and say drop the birds! Note that I'm expecting my opinion to be tempered by many other people's, and I'm not too worried about how well you'd handle the converse if you do end up going with it after all. But if I'm going to chime in just for fun's sake, I'll say drop the birds, possibly precisely because that's what the reader doesn't want, at least not at first.
"No birds!" The reader will share the Our World characters' astonishment and weirdly bond over their outrage at the lack of birds. It'll become emblematic of just how "Otherworldly" the "Other World" which has dragons is, an easy way they could convey its outlandishness to other Our Worlders - "No birds! How do they manage?" Yet just as other cultures we wonder this about regarding so many things - how do they manage? - on some level they'd manage just fine, and when the reader would accept that, it'd be like they'd be accepting a wider part of the in-world reality along with it.
Plus, if you're trying to come up with dragons that will catch the reader's imagination, I think it will force your own mind to go in directions in which it normally wouldn't if you're forced to navigate around a lack of birds, giving it extra motivation to come up with more specific dragon subspecies functions. But, as I said that's just my opinion at first whiff, without having read the story itself of course, so make of it what you will and take it with a shaker of salt. :)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-06-21 08:36 am (UTC)"No birds!" The reader will share the Our World characters' astonishment and weirdly bond over their outrage at the lack of birds. It'll become emblematic of just how "Otherworldly" the "Other World" which has dragons is, an easy way they could convey its outlandishness to other Our Worlders - "No birds! How do they manage?" Yet just as other cultures we wonder this about regarding so many things - how do they manage? - on some level they'd manage just fine, and when the reader would accept that, it'd be like they'd be accepting a wider part of the in-world reality along with it.
Plus, if you're trying to come up with dragons that will catch the reader's imagination, I think it will force your own mind to go in directions in which it normally wouldn't if you're forced to navigate around a lack of birds, giving it extra motivation to come up with more specific dragon subspecies functions. But, as I said that's just my opinion at first whiff, without having read the story itself of course, so make of it what you will and take it with a shaker of salt. :)