| 1948 ‘W. Tenn’ Ionian Cycle Aug. 112/1
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Imagine! Another civilization in embryo—avian this time. An avian culture would hardly build cities. But this is a culture where the glider comes before the wheel.
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| 1961 P. Anderson Day After Doomsday in Galaxy Mag. Dec. 13/2
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Yeh, he thought, they're for sure prettier than humans, but you have to see them to realize it. About five feet tall, the short avian body was balanced on two stout yellow legs. The arms, thinner and weaker than humans, ended in hands whose three fingers, four-jointed and mutually opposed, were surprisingly dextrous. The head, atop a long thick neck, was large and round, with a hooked beak. A throat pouch produced a whole orchestra of sounds, even labials. But all you could really convey in words was the intense blueness of the feathers, the white plumage of tail and crest.
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| 1965 P. Anderson in Analog Sci. Fiction/Sci. Fact Aug. 128/1
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The monarch inclined his avian head.
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| 1965 P. Anderson in Analog Sci. Fiction/Sci. Fact July 38/1
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Torches guttering in sconces threw an uneasy light—dim and red to Adzel, bright to a native—on sleazy garments, avian faces, unwinking eyes.
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| 1969 ‘J. Tiptree, Jr.’ in Galaxy Mag. Jan. 64/1
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If you wish to enter your animals in the Non-Flying Avian classes, they must not fly at all.
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| 1979 D. Drake Hammer's Slammers (1985) 59
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Their sharp-edged faces, scale-dusted but more avian than reptile, stared enraptured at one of their number who hung in the air.
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| 1989 A. C. Clarke & G. Lee Rama II 315
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When she yelled into the depths of the avian lair the second time, there was an immediate response.
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| 1990 T. Johnson Archimedes Effect in B. Fawcett Far Stars War 38
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Risky Lady was a standard aerospace plane which still had‥the ever-present biolink the avian aliens had given him.
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| 1990 A. McCaffrey & J. L. Nye Death of Sleep (1992) 353
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We've seen avian nests but they're always near water, preferably large lakes or rivers.
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| 1999 D. Duane Storm at Eldala 15
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Besides the colonists, there's a considerable presence of scientists studying the riglia, those avian sentients they found.
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| 1999 D. Duane Storm at Eldala 48
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Long, graceful, translucent creatures, gossamer-thin, like ribbons of shimmering air, they excited some brief interest. Though avian, they were very unlike other avian species so far discovered. They spent their whole lives in the air, subsisting on airborne algae and plankton native to the high mists of the Rivendale mountain chains.
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| 1999 M.J. Friedman My Brother's Keeper iii. ix. 116
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Is nacelles extended like the wings of some monstrous avian predator.
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